Room 1 Update

Children from Room 1 with their rapidly growing plants.

These pots of bean and sunflower seedlings will go home with them this week.

Seed Sowing Frenzy in Room 1

Room 1 have been learning all about the 'ee' sound and last Friday morning as part of this learning, the children sowed some sunflower and bean seeds in containers. Each child had to fill their container with the special soil mix and make 6 holes for their seeds. The seeds were popped into the holes, watered, and in the last week all the children have been watching with great interest as the seeds germinate and begin to grow. Very exciting!! The children plan to plant some of the sunflowers around the school, and take the beans to grow at home.

Flower Garden Update

Here are some recent photos of the rose garden. Can you spot the A and the S. The scent is divine.

Friday was leek and potato soup day! Members of the Green team harvested leeks at morning tea time and then chopped them along with potatoes. This was all saute’d together in butter. (It smelt devine!, and set off the smoke detector-ooops!)
Next chicken stock and water were added and the whole thing left to simmer away until all the veges were cooked through. Once cooked and cooled a little, the soup was whizzed up until smooth.
Later in the day the Green team from each class got to sample the brew! Delicious was pretty much the unanimous response! Other comments included ‘Hey, my Nana makes this!’ ‘This is like Dads Samoan soup!’ “This is the best soup ever!”
So leeks and potatoes are definitely going into the garden for this summer!

Farewell to Mrs Teear

This afternoon Amanda Teear was farewelled at a full school assembly. Mrs Teear had taught at Addington for almost 7 years and said that they were the best teaching years of her life!

Te Tipuranga, Whanau Kowhai, Room 10, and the Green Team all paid tribute to the wonderful contributions she had made to life at Addington school. It was through Mrs Teear's original efforts to get funding that the Green Team has been able to get up off the ground and achieve so much to date. Ms Heath thanked Mrs Teear for being such a great teaching practitioner, collegue and friend.

We will all miss her sense of fun and fantastic contributions to teaching at our school and wish her all the very best for the future.

Rose Garden Carpet of Colour

A huge thank you to Graham Wood for giving up his time to help the Green team plant out 406 alyssum plants over the last two days. Graham had the children working like a well oiled machine, trowels flying, and the plants were in the ground in no time. The children were so enthusiastic. It all looks amazing.

John Moore, one of our wonderful Lions helpers, joined Graham yesterday and they continued with weeding around the roses. John has offered to help us plan where to put some of the native trees we have recently received. Thank you guys, the Green team really appreciate your enthusiasm and hard work!

Bringing in the Birds

Today Room 4 and the Green Team, made pinecone birdfeeders. These were made by spreading peanut butter over the pine cones and then rolling them in bird seed! Mrs Douglas kindly provided the ingredients and we got to work. Most children ended up with more seed and peanut butter on them than the pine cones!!

Next the cones were carefully hung in trees around the classrooms and library.

We look forward to watching our feathered friends enjoy these treats over the coming days.

Green Team Update

We at the green team have so much news to share.

Potatoes in for Christmas
Now that spring is really and truly underway, we are pleased to report that our Jersy Benne potatoes are in. See the photo of Kahu and Tamzin finishing the planting at the end of last Term. They are up and almost ready to be mounded. (The potatoes that is!!)

The Rose Garden

After much pondering and discussion it was agreed that alyssum flowers would be planted into the two front beds. So in preparation Room 2 kindly offered to come and help the Green team weed these two beds and the rose garden as well! This took place last Friday and everyone was working so hard that Mrs Blackburn had trouble convincing her children to return to class to pack up the classroom! The children had great fun discovering all sorts of bugs and beetles. One was heard to say that they’d “ never done this before”, and another “I don’t want to go home, can we do some more after school?” Of course the whole of Room 2 has now joined the Green Team.

This week, wonderful Mr Wood and his trailer collected 4 scoops of soil for the beds. At lunch time a large group of Greenteamers and many volunteers worked a chain of buckets and emptied the trailer, very speedily, onto the garden. In no time at all the soil was spread, and is all ready to plant up. Thank you Mr Wood for helping us out!! We are just awaiting our plants now.

Vegetable Garden Mural

WOW!!! This is looking soooo amazing. Dorinda had a group working on this masterpiece last week, and it is just about finished. See the photos. Isn’t it stunning??? We have permission to paint up the rubbish skip and at this stage our plan is to disguise it as a chicken coop! The children will be coming up with their designs soon! Mega thanks to Dorinda who has given up several of her Friday afternoons to oversee this project.

The Vege Garden

So now it is time to sow and plant up our vege garden. Our own compost has been great and another bay is ready for use. So we will be busy over the next week filling up the vege beds with compost, seeds and plants.

Plants for Sale

In an attempt to raise some money for seeds and plants for next year, and as a way of literally taking home the green message, we plan to raise some plants in containers and sell them later in the Term. We will let you all know when the Great Green Team Plant Sale is on.

Plant and Tree Donations

A huge thank you to Chris Liddington, uncle of Jarvis, who has kindly given the Green Team seven native trees. These will be planted around the school, and a lovely totara will be used to replace the large tree by the library who’s roots were damaged in the recent earthquake and aftershocks.

Thank you also to Mrs Holland, our librarian who brings in native seedlings for us to plant around the school.

Mural Underway

Last Friday, members of the Green Team along with Mitch, Anne, Dorinda, Sarah and Jo from the staff, continued on with the painting of the new mural. It was a great success as we were able to complete the background colours and the children began on the garden details, including a cat by Sofi that was both stunning and colourful.

Farewell to Two Green Teamers

Over the last couple of weeks, The Green Team has farewelled two very active members of the team, Brooke and Caroline. Brooke has moved to a new school in Christchurch, while Caroline is heading up to a school in Auckland. We are very sad to see these wonderful girls leave Addington. They have both made a huge contribution to our school,and have been enthusiastic members of our team right from the start. We wish them all the very best for the future and hope they will keep in touch via our blog

Compost Heap Revamp

After our recent trip to the Strickland St Gardens to check out their compost heaps, the Green team have started working on our own school heaps.

We have labelled our compost bins to ensure people are filling the correct bin and now all food scraps are collected for a full week before we do our weekly layering ("Friday Compost Sandwich")

We had lots of fun shifting the heaps from one bin to another, and have already got a lovely 'brew' composting away ready for our spring planting.