Month: March 2023

Today was a very exciting day for us because we got to be Scientists for an hour!

We had about eight scientists come in to work with our school today. We looked at the leaf litter from Ngawakahiamoe. Heather brought in samples from 2 different areas – one from a wet area that was lower and one from the bank which was higher and bit drier.

We were able to collect some of the leaf litter and put it into a petri dish. We then got to look at it under microscopes.

We got taught to use the microscopes you have to put your hands on the dials on the side to move the magnifying glass up and down, there were also little dials on eye parts that you could turn to enhance the view.

Some of things we found were: bugs, such as: snails, centipedes, millipedes, spiders, sand hoppers, land hoppers, ladybugs (both blue and red), ants, flies, bugs that light up and worms, mushrooms, sticks, leaves, soil and kahikatea berries.

Some of us, who were really interested in the science are able to go back after lunch and have another look.

      

Ngāwakahiamoe is a swamp bush reserve behind our school, which is named for – Where the waka sleeps.

On Thursday, our entire school (except Layla – who has a broken leg) walked the 2.5 kilometres from our school to Ngāwakahiamoe, which is found out behind us. We are the Kaitiaki of this area, so it is nice to go out there and explore the land out there and learn how we can help look after it.

Some students in our class, Kaliah-Rose and Ngarongo, as well as other students in the school, have helped plant trees out Ngāwakahiamoe as their iwi is closely connected to this place.

Some of our favourite things to do were: play amongst the roots, swinging on vines, exploring the forest, finding bones from a cow, finding lots of little (edible) berry seeds and learning more about the environment. It was also really cool to find some silver ferns!

On Tuesday, we have some scientists coming in to help us explore the leaf litter we found on the ground out there, as there are many tiny snail species out at Ngāwakahiamoe.

        

Last week, our entire school took the bus (or van) down to Waitārere Beach.

Olivia and Nate from Sustainable Coastlines came in first thing in the morning, and spoke to our whole school about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

We were then broken up into 2 groups – years 5-8 and years 1-4. The year 5’s went first and waited for everyone else down at the beach

When everyone got to the beach, most of us were able to put hi-vis vests (there wasn’t enough for everyone to have one) as well as a pair of gloves because we were going to be picking up rubbish!

The year 5-8’s then hammered pegs into the ground about 50 metres apart and then walked along as a huge group picking up any rubbish that we saw.

The year 1-4’s were on a different part of the beach, we were in smaller groups walking amongst our boundary looking for rubbish.

The year 1-4’s also got to build sandcastles, while some of the year 5-8’s did a running race along the beach.

The coolest thing that was found was a MASSIVE pumice rock, that was way bigger than all of our heads!

When we got back to school, we put all the rubbish we had found on a tarpaulin – there was over 300

pieces of rubbish!

What we learnt about this is that we should always take our rubbish home with us when we leave somewhere as the environment is just as important as us!