Sorting Things for the Compost Bin

We discovered that there were pencil shavings in the paper bin. It was bad because worms can't eat them so we had to seperate it all with tongs. We also saw tissues that the worms couldn't eat - we compost tissues. It took us a long time to separate the rubbish. It took us probably 30 minutes or a bit more to sort out the rubbish. We were so tired we had to have a rest but it was also fun. We even had fresh air and we took turns. We only had 3 in our group so we all had to take turns sorting the rubbish.

Sorting out Rm13's Rubbish

Rm 13 needed to sort out their paper rubbish because it was all  jumbled up with compost bin, worm farm food and some plastic. So, we took the box outside with the tongs and sorted through everything.We put the tissue paper and pencil shavings in the compost bin, and we put the handtowels in the worm food bin.

We are getting better at sorting our rubbish. We want to be a ZERO WASTE room.


By GM, LW, and CC.

Blood Thirsty Monster Leech

One of our classmates found a monster leech by a dead hedgehog on the way to school last week. At first he thought it was a worm but then he noticed the fan mouth and the two stripes on the leech's back. He ran to school and looked at it under the microscope and showed Mrs H, and took a picture of the leech. Finally he let it go.

Fun at Te Tuhi Art Gallery

We were exhausted when we were walking down to the Te Tuhi Art Centre because it was such a hot, sunny day. It was exciting showing our play of Rangi and Papa to Jeremy. We can't wait until the next time we go back.


Making posters was really fun. We were all working as a team and being creative.

The finished and mounted posters...

Then we went to the gallery and we saw some wonderful art.


Some Mums helped us and we really appreciated it.


We are going back to work with a sculptor, Gregor Kregar, later in March. On that visit we will be making 3-d dream houses.


JG, NM-S, CB and JW

The Inanga Monitoring Project

Today, 8 March 2012, a small group of Eco Warriors from R13 went to the stream beside the school to set bait traps for WaiCare. We are working with WaiCare to monitor the inanga, or small fish, in our stream. The scientists are doing a study and they need members of the public to help set the bait traps and send in the data about what fish were caught.


We didn’t know if there would be any inanga…. So we set out at 10.30am to set the traps!

Julia from WaiCare helped us. She brought the 5 traps. We put them together carefully and then, before we shut them tight, we put in a small medicine bottle which contained the BAIT. It had a small amount of cheese (to attract the fish) and marmite. Yum!! Kiwi kids love marmite.

We set three traps below the waterfall and two traps above the waterfall section of the stream. It had been raining a little in the night and the stream was quite high. We chose quiet sections of the stream out of the turbulent, rushing water in the middle.

We returned to the stream about two and a half hours later to take out the traps.... what did we find?
We did not get anything in the traps this time - no inanga, banded kokopu, smelt or baby eels.


Our stream may be too silted up or polluted to be an ideal habitat for fish life. We will go back again later in the year to check again.


But... We did find lots of rubbish and were horrified to see that most of it probably blew down from our school. We think we need to be more careful and not have any plastic wrappings in our lunch boxes!




AT,  BW-H, LK, GM, LY & JW

The Orb Spider

The finder with the catcher

Last week one of our class mates came to school with a amazing spider. It was as big as your palm.  Luckily it was in a bug catcher. Everyone looked at it.   One person was scared

This is a close up of the spider.

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