Cosy Vege Garden

The Green team has been busy cleaning up and tidying up various parts of the school garden.
Yesterday lunch time, the children from the junior classes harvested the last of the potatoes. Leek and potato soup is on the menu for next week. Yummy!
The children also spread compost over the vege beds, making the leeks, silverbeet, cabbage and bok choi cosy for the winter! More peastraw managed to make its way onto the grass, than the garden beds, but was soon raked into the right place!
Broad beans were sown for a delicious spring feast.

The Green team, and Vic Philips, (our new school caretaker) continue to spread leaves and grass clippings over the area for our new native tree zone. Pea straw for this area is still to come.

Native Area Work Begins

Recently the Green team started clearing up along the Brougham St boundary and down the adjacent fence line as they began work on the area to be planted out in natives trees and shrubs over the next few months.

Children were busy raking up the leaves and mown grass to use as mulch for the ground area to be planted. John Moore, a friend of the school and member of the Lions organisation, who has put together our planting plan spent time cutting back some of the existing trees. These were planted 30 years ago and in real need of some attention.

Now that John has marked out the planting area, the Green team will spread more mulch and some of our own compost, and then pea straw over the lot so that we are already to start planting. Very exciting!! Jack Elphick came down to school to visit the Green team and see where his seedlings will be going.

Once the pea straw goes down, and the boundary is marked out with posts shall start the exciting job of planting.

The Christchurch City Council recently granted us $150.00 worth of plants from Trees for Canterbury. We look forward to going there to choose our plants in the next few weeks.

It is all coming together beautifully!!

Seedlings For Native Revamp!

Today Hanna and Sean, Green Team leaders from Room 10, visited with Jack Elphick to look at the plants he has propagated and now offered to the school.

Jack who lives locally has been very active in environmental issues, both in New Zealand and overseas. He has worked in South America and was involved at Muraroa, protesting against nuclear testing in the Pacific. More recently Jack was doing volunteer work for DOC propagating native plants on Mana Island.

Jack, who has been very busy has offered us wineberry, ake ake, cabbage trees and kanuka seedlings for our revamping of the school's native area. The Green team plan to pick these up early next term, and put them into an area near the compost heaps to grow on until we are ready to plant them out. A huge thank you to Jack for his wonderful offer.

Cauliflower Soup for Room 7

Today Room 7 created and consumed curried cauliflower soup! At morning tea, Olivia, Dan, Sam, Kahu and Ngaire , chopped onions, cauliflower(harvested from Friday), and saute'd it all in butter and curry powder. Next they added chicken stock, water and the soup cooked until everything was soft. The staff room smelt devine, and many of the staff passing through stared longingly into the cooking pot, hoping for a try of the left overs! But it was not to be.

The mixture was then whizzed up, milk and flour added ( to thicken slightly), and served up at lunch time.

All but two members of the class were keen to try the soup, and second and third helpings were soon being served up! The pot was soon empty!

Well done Room 7. What great risk takers! Lovely new flavours to try at home.

Catch Up

Today we were busy with a bit of a clean and tidy up of some of the gardens in front of the senior classrooms. The Green team members of Rooms 10 and 11 weeded the beds outside their rooms, while Room 9 members weeded some of the vegetable garden and put fresh compost in the beds outside Room 4. The Juniors are planning to plant up their beds over the winter!

After lunch Mrs Douglas and her lovely Room 7 Juniors came out to weed more of the vegetable garden. Hannah and Sean from Room 10 demonstrated how the compost collection system turned food scraps into wonderful growing material.

Room 7 harvested cauliflowers, cabbages, tomatoes, beans, and the odd strawberry!

I think there will be a wee feast had early next week.!!

Art Attack 2011 'The Addington Market'

This year we got together with the First Language Group to create 'The Addington Market'. We hope you enjoy our creation.

2011 Starts with a Bean Feast!!!

Another year, and the new Green team for 2011 kicked off with a bean harvest and feast! Our beans had grown well over the holidays thanks to Emily Rose, Hazel and their Mum who kindly kept up the watering. Everything is looking great!

Last Friday some of the senior school Green teamers, picked and then cooked up the beans for a feast at lunch time. We compared the taste of raw and cooked beans, and there were fans of both!

Green Team membership in the Senior school has rocketed to 64!!!! The Junior school has yet to sign up, however numbers are expected to be just as high. That would mean over half the school is now part of the Green Team! Fantastic!

So... this will mean a new way of managing our projects, and will probably involve each class taking turns to help out in particular areas, and on certain projects. This is going to be a wonderful year with so many children involved.