Last week we had two guest speakers come in, Di Buchan and Lenore Winterburn.

Di Buchan came first, she talked to use about energize Otaki.

Energize Otaki is a community that is working together to reduce carbon emissions by planting trees, the bike giveaway, the repair shop, the solar farm, and biodigesters.

Planting trees,

Friends by the river is a organization linked to energize Otaki that plants trees down by Crystals bend, They’ve planted around nine thousand trees this year.

The Bike giveaway,

Instead of scraping bikes and leaving them for landfill they repair the bikes and give them away to people so they use less fuel or to kids that don’t have cars in general so they don’t have to get their parents to drive them around.

The repair shop,

The repair shop is similar to the bike give away but instead of only repairing bikes the repair shop will fix anything and give it new life so it doesn’t go to the landfill.

The Solar farm,

The Solar farm is a farm of solar panels down by the landfill, they use this to power many things.

Biodigesters,

Biodigesters are a apparatus that uses old food and manure then turns it into energy to power stoves and etc.

Lenore Will burn came by to talk to us about trap NZ,

Trap NZ is a community which is trying to get New Zealand pest free by 2050,

New Zealand was once pest free but many pests have been introduced-

(the only land mammal in New Zealand before they were introduced was the bat!)

-Pests that have been introduced are rats, stoats, weasels, cats (feral), hedgehogs, and possums (rabbits and hares are also pests but don’t eat the animals)

These pests have eaten so many of our native birds and that’s why you don’t see many anymore.

lots of our native birds walk on the ground because they didn’t need to fly before pests came here, but now they’re here and are becoming a problem so we need to get rid of them. the birds shouldn’t have to learn how to fly just because they’re the easy target. If we bring them there we should get rid of them.

The link to my research on friends of the River is here

My slide

In week nine we were presenting our slideshow about birds, we made the slide show to linked with Te wiki o Te reo maori!

We linked it by finding maori stories about our birds, the stories were, How the kiwi lost its wings, The battle of the birds and The Legend of Māui and Tīeke

We summarized each story and put them on our document.

Our document : Link

We also helped clear out and weed where the pig lives in the garden as they are going to start using it to plant Zucchinis!

In week seven our class were working in our gardens and watering them so the grow. In my group we have a couple sprouts, lettuce, cucumber, spring onion and broccoli growing!

We were also working on a poster about bird of the year.

A slide about Te wiki o te reo maori.

And a document about conservation.

All linked to birds, because birds were the topic my group picked.

We are doing these because it’s Te Reo Maori week and it’s the week you can vote for the bird of the year! (And conservation goes along with our science topic of living things.)

We also made sentences out of our vocab words for the week, my sentence was

“Conservation is to help the environment, people do this by picking up trash so the microplastics don’t affect the habitat, they could also do this by planting native trees or transplanting native trees in plantations.”

Also we learnt about how the earth was made with Ranginui and Papatuanuku.

We also learnt about Te Kore  (The nothingness) Te Po (Darkness) and Te Ao Marama (Light and life)

Last week we were doing more research around plant cells and on Friday we were doing research on pumice.

Pumice

Pumice is a volcanic rock.

Pumice improves the quality of soil because of its porous properties.

Porous refers to materials that are permeated with pores or cavities.

permeated refers to the spread throughout something.

Plant cells

we were looking at the difference between animal cells and plants cells and we drew the plant cells to have a look at them.

Garden

We moved pumice form the school garden to our gardens.

In week five and six we were researching about native birds due to the vote coming up soon.

I was researching the kingfisher.

The kingfisher is a smaller breed of bird found around forested areas and eat many things from small streams like freshwater crayfish, small fish, small crabs and tadpoles.

The bird has a deep green coat. (the females having a slightly lighter colour).

Document I have made for more information on the Kingfisher:

Kingfisher

We also were planting and weeding in our garden.

My group planted Coriander, Carrots, Lavender and some mystery seeds (we don’t know what they are).

After we planted them we watered in them and now are documenting and waiting for our plants to, hopefully, grow.

My group is hoping by the end of the week (week seven) that we will have some seedlings.

Last Thursday and Friday we drafted and created a 3D version of a simplified animal cell out of scrapes we found in the science lab, We used pom poms, pipe cleaners, tape, hot glue, a styrofoam ball, clear green plastic, coloured paper and a paper plate.

We used the paper plate as the base and stuck everything down to make the animal cell then we showed it to the class to judge it.

Overall it was a fun experience and a great way to learn about the cell and what’s in it.

Last friday we walked to haruatai to have a look at all the native trees.

We walked the track to have a look at all the signs and write a summary on one of the trees.

While we were walking the track we found a species of fungi, we took it back to the science room for a further look and to hopefully identify the fungi.

I managed to identify the fungi as being a ileodictyon cibarium (basket fungi).

The fungi has an egg-like structure which then expands into a white basket-shaped structure.

When the mushroom is broken, the inside has a hexagon pattern and a yellow tinted jelly substance inside.

Link to more on basket fungi

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/382779-Ileodictyon-cibarium

Last Friday we went to Haruatai park for a science practical.

The practical had us walk to Haruatai park with the class then when we got to the base of the trail we split into two groups.

My group consisted of Me, Carys, Summer, Ollie, Emanea and Ruby.

We walked around the trail looking at all the native tree signs and we each memorized one to relay to our teacher to make sure we were paying attention.

Then we walked back to class and we collected all the tree names.