Silver Award

Mrs Stewart wrote this for our school newsletter...
"We were delighted to announce at our assembly last week that after a comprehensive reflection process, our school has been awarded the Enviro Silver Award. Special thanks to Mr Barnes who has helped so much with his building work and the students in the Enviro team for the additional work and leadership that has been put into ensuring that we achieved this. Well done to the students, teachers and parents who have all supported the programmes over a number of years."
"I am very proud of you all" - Mrs Shepheard.

Yummy!

We are fundraising for the butterfly garden.

Delicious pumpkins for sale. Only $3.00

Worm tea $2.00 for a big bottle. 

Great for those winter gardens.

Weeding May 2011

Butterfly Garden

As you might know, in the juniors  there is a big place that is been used by Mr Barnes. .It is going to be a butterfly garden. The Enviro Group said that the juniors only have a play ground and the monkey bars they don't have any garden type thing. So we thought we should make the butterfly garden for them.

This is the butterfly garden a couple of weeks later.
Can you see how it has changed?

ROC DAY

SUNNYBRAE NORMAL SCHOOL

Respect Our Community (ROC) Day

ROC Day at Sunnybrae Normal School is a day when we have fun activities all day to promote road safety, become more environmentally friendly and explore the walkways around our school. EVERYONE walks to school. We meet at one of five different locations and all walk together with the teachers, picking up rubbish as we go to clean up our walkways and footpaths. Max the pukeko joins us to encourage us and to give out stickers. 

The rest of the day is broken into 3 blocks. Working in 12 family groups (with our little brothers and sisters) we either go to a fun art activity, a garden activity or the ‘Team Challenge’ which Ali from ARTA helps us run.

In the Team Challenge we get quiz questions to answer. (These are about how to walk to school safely, how to cycle safely, what to do with rubbish and how to approach a strange dog.) Each question answered correctly is followed by a physical challenge which requires team work. So we learn to work together as a team to try to get through as many challenges as we can to win the competition.

In the middle block of the day all the seniors and middles break into 6 groups to go on one of six 1 – 2 hour walks around the local community. Using a map we explore the local walkways, visit the local bus stations and practise this fun and environmentally friendly way to travel to school. Taking plastic bags with us, we use it as an opportunity to continue our community clean-up. 

This year the North Shore City Council provided us with travel packs. They included pedometers to count our steps, stop watches to time our walks and cameras to take photos. We recorded how far we could get in 5, 10 and 15 minutes. The NSCC will produce a map to show us how far away ‘by foot’ we live from school.

We finish the day with a short assembly and a presentation of prizes. 

Our thanks to Jamie Adkins (from NSCC) and Ali Johns (from ARTA) for their help on the day.

ROC DAY

Here are some photos of our ROC day this year. Look for a video shortly. Students are learning about worm farming, how to weed our native bush stand, and how to enjoy our local environment.

Kauri Tree Planting

On Wednesday 2 June 2010 at lunchtime the Enviro Group planted a Kauri tree.. We went to the shade house with Mr Barns and Mrs Shepeard and got the Kauri tree. After that we went to the compost bin and go some compost for the tree. Then Emma started wheeling the compost and the Kauri tree,down to the backfield bush area. It was hard to find the right place for us to plant the Kauri tree. Finally we found a place so ,Mr Barns started digging. He lifted the Kauri tree out of the wheelbarrow ,carefully took it out of the pot and placed in the hole. Next he put the compost around the tree and flattened it.Then he put the stake in next to the plant to keep it growing straight. Soon it will be big and strong!