Green finger Zone plan.

On the Friday of the last week of term three, we had planned for a grand opening to celebrate our group's achievements.  With funding from Horizons regional council, we had the opportunity to revamp the growing unit and shade house with new sprinklers, timers, hoses and work benches. Huntah's granddad helped so much with this area. With Mitre Ten giving us big discounts it made it a lot easier. The whole group worked a lot with building the shade house and making the vege gardens look really good. We are really proud of how much the veges in the tractor tires have grown. Also how well the growing unit has been working.

Week 6 Update

We have made our compost for our science investigation. We have finished all of our testing. We learnt how to make good compost and what to put in it. We can use what we have learnt to make our compost at school. We also made our traffic lights. Thank you to Mrs and  Mr Carter for helping us to make and paint our traffic lights and make our signs for ur vege garden.
In our action learning area we have cleared most of the dirt off the trailer and started making the paths. We would like to thank Ben for helping us with this at the working bee. Thank you Mr Digby for bringing in the dirt for us to use.
Our next step is to finish the tyre fence and get the rest of the dirt off the trailer.

Our Pinata

Just recently, over the last few weeks, we have been constructing a pinata as a technology activity to solve problems. After Mrs Fielder got back from her sabbatical, she thought that it would be good for us to make one of our own.
The criteria was to make one that would stay together, had materials to suit, the shape was effective, the size was reasonable, it would hold treats, had an entry point for the treats to fit in, is able to break at the right time and will hang up.
We thought about making a round one with party hats on the side. But after scrolling through the images we decided to try an make an alligator. At the time we thought it was going to be to hard to make, but after looking at our materials we second guessed our selves and got stuck in to make it work.
We now have to stick the head, feet and jaw on and then get started on giving it more details such as painting it, putting party hats on the back for spikes and giving the feet spiky toes. Pixel said that the start of painting is looking really good and Dylan said the body is really starting to take shape.

1/8/13 Our compost bin plan.

We have thought about making compost bins for our school to help our native areas. Hilton Digby, Huntah's grandad, is making us some compost bins. We have figured out that we would like to have 3 bins and each one will be, 1x1 metres wide and 900 mm high.

Horizons Regional Council Community Grant

Apiti School-2013 Report

This report will show how the above grant was utilized to complete the many tasks needed to set up the structures needed for the system of growing native seed to healthy plants. These will be planted out in the community, school grounds, native bush area and local farms.

The first step was to revitalise the growing unit. This we did by cleaning off the shade cloth, putting in a sprinkler timer, new nozzles and tying up the pipes. We also connected the whole unit to the main water system.

We then we worked on finishing off the shade house. This involved putting up the rest of the shade cloth. We also had to put in a door and gravel on the floor. Mr Digby  worked with the boys and put in a working bench. We also connected this unit to the water system. Mr Digby helped us with this and worked with the children on their planning sketches and what they needed to buy. The children went shopping with their list and sketches of how the watering system would look like. Staff at Mitre 10 Feidling were very accommodating and gave us a huge discount.

  The grant was also used to buy shovels, spades, buckets, trowels and other gear for each whanau group to use for gardening. These are used in the school grounds native planting area, in the forest and in our veggie gardens. We will be working with Natasha from Horizons to raise more native seedlings. These we hope to put back onto local farms and in wetland plantings. We have recently eco-sourced seeds from the native bush which we are attempting to raise.

 

A Note from Huntah Digby (age 11)

My Whanou group is the Expert Plantagtors. We are in charge of looking after all of the native plants around our School and our community. Having a system like this will help us grow trees big enough for us to plant all around the community. We are very lucky to have this support from Horizons. My team has worked hard to get this up and running with alot of support from my Grandad-Hilton Digby. He showed us a lot of stuff like how to build a strong shade house structure. We used levels, saws, hammers and spades. We also got support from local businesses for the gravel. I have arranged the seedlings from smaller to bigger on the growing unit. We also raised our very successful potato crops under the unit!

 We have also dug out seedlings from local gardens and farms to raise on. Some of these we put into our native planting area.

 Part of our growing system is also our hydroponics unit which teaches the children many life skills as well. We have support from a community member and he works closely with the children teaching them many many skills.

Work in action.

We have tidied up the shade house and growing unit already for the principals when they come.

So far we have put the bigger plants in the shade house and with the growing unit, we have put plants in order with seed trays, Smaller pots and bags and then at the end we have got the root trainers.
Now we are going to ring Natasha from the HR C/Horizon regional council to get some seedlings to plant and move older plants in to root trainers into pots and bags.
After our production we are planning to make compost bins. Huntah 

Our Shade House Plan

Expert Plantagators

We went well with our native area  with all our books  shade house  and our planting shed we came first
We all pitched in and weeded  our native area