Makarora Site Visit

Wanaka Wastebusters played host to Makarora School on a very rainy day. They were on a trip into to town anyway and asked if they could come and have a look around site to see what happens to all of their recycling.

Needless to say, despite the rain, we had a great time. Utilising the big window in the shop we were able to look at the processing area and discuss what goes on in the shelter. We then braved up and made it outside into the rain to have a closer look at the line, the press and the polystyrene machine.

These site visits really add value to the work we do in schools about recycling and sustainability issues. The children loved watching the press squash the cardboard and guessing how much it would compress it. Going up onto the line, seeing how the different materials are sorted and first hand experiencing what it is like if people don't rinse their recycling. The magnatron is always a winner too, looking at the steel cans fly off the line towards the magnetic belt is almost magical. finally the children got to put some polystyrene into the big blue machine.

Thanks to everyone out the back who made this visit such a fun one. Remember, if yuo'd like to come and have a look around just drop me an email (simon@wanakawastebusters.co.nz) and I can arrange it.

Vision Mapping of a Sensory Kind in Makarora

After my year summary meeting at Hawea Flat school I headed up the road to Makarora for the afternoon. Makarora are a fairly new Enviroschool and are really embracing the program.

They've made a vision map and are slowly but surely starting to add to their pool of knowledge. One of the areas they really want to improve are the school grounds. So we set about recording some of the more sensory features of the school grounds.

What kind of colours are out there? Where is shady or sunny? Where does it smell good or bad? How do we record these things on the vision map anyway? The children soon figured out a pretty cool key to show these different features and after a bit of an explore around the grounds came back inside to add them to the map.

Look at us, we've got a bike track!

Yesterday I went up to Hawea Flat to do the end of year summary for their Enviroschools work and look what I found.......

....doesn't it look sick? So if you don't ride a bike then you may not quite appreciate how good this is, but take it from me this is one amazing addition to the school playgrounds and community. The children are buzzing about it. They are currently going through various safety training sessions so they can get the qualified to ride it.

So for those in the know, they have two dirt jump lines, one large, one small with a series of pumps for the return to the drop in ramp. There is a very large pump track in the shape of an 'H' and what looks to be a very fun track around the whole thing.

There is still a little more digger work to do on landscaping the site but for the most part it is ridable. As you can see there is also much more work to do, an orchard is being planned, water needs to be investigated, these things need to be watered otherwise they will just blow away into clouds of dust.

The track has been built by the Four Four Three boys, of Dirt Park and Lismore Park fame. I'm absolutely blown away by what they have achieved here. Such a great job guys.

This has been such and amazing project to be involved in, I think it really shows us that we can get what we want if we put the work in. The Envirogroup had the idea, they found some people to help. A local project manager offered up some time to help start it off, they visited Lakes Environmental to get permission, sweet talked the local earth workers, raised funds to help pay for it, involved road and bike safety people.....the list just goes on. Fantastic work everyone involved....I think I might just have to pay a visit there on Saturday afternoon and see if it rides as good as it looks.

Congratulations Hawea Flat - Our newest Silver Enviroschool

Congratulations Hawea Flat! This year they put in an entry to receive the Silver Enviroschools award and guess what? They got it!!!! Well done everyone up there. These awards aren't given out to any old Enviroschool, lots of work goes into achieving this level of recognition.

I've heard a rumor that the bike track is complete and the children have started to ride it, I'm looking forward to having a quick roll around next week when I go up there. I'll take some pics and post them here so you can all see how cool it is. Even though the bike tracks have been completed there is still a few things to do so the hard work isn't over yet.

Once again, congratulations Hawea Flat, well done to you all!!!!

Step-by-Step Instruction On How To Make A Bottle Rocket Car

So what is a bottle rocket car? They are a fantastic toy you can make from items you’d normally throw away. The basic ingredients for the rocket part are a plastic bottle, wine cork, bike inner tube valve, water and compressed air.

In short, we drill a hole through the cork, just wide enough to fit the valve through. Put some water in the bottle and tip the bottle so the water covers the opening of the bottle. Connect your bike pump to the valve and pump. The air enters the bottle and starts to compress. The pressure eventually builds to a level that blows the cork out of the bottle. As the water rushes out the bottle flies off, this is a beautiful example of Newton’s third law of motion.

If you’ve never seen or heard of Newton’s third law of motion before you can read it below, ever wondered about the science behind ollying a skateboard, this is it:

“Whenever particle A exerts a force on another particle B, B simultaneously exerts a force on A with the same magnitude in the opposite direction. The strong form of the law further postulates that these two forces act along the same line. This law is often simplified into the sentence "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."” – Sir Isaac Newton

If you don’t know who Sir Isaac Newton is, Google him, he was one very clever fellow.

When I first decided to make bottle rockets for kids club I was a little wary of launching rockets into the air with a bunch of five year olds……perhaps not the safest activity. So, how could I get around this? The solution was fairly simple, take the rocket design and develop it into a car. This way they can be shot off along the ground, nice and safe.

Are you ready? Time for the step by step instructions…….

What do you need?

The tools:

A drill

A sharp knife

An old bicycle inner tube valve

A bike pump, preferably with a long-ish hose

A glue gun – Very useful but not absolutely necessary

A vice – Again useful but not absolutely necessary

An adult to help with the tricky bits

A pair of wire snippers

The ingredients:

1 plastic drinks bottle, 600ml, 1l, 1.5l…..so long as the cork makes a good fit with the cap. The bigger the bottle the further it will go

1 wine cork

1 wire coat hanger

1 egg box

1 old bicycle inner tube

8 milk bottle tops

Most of the items you need to make the rocket car you should find hiding in the recycling bin. What we are going to do is reuse these items before we recycle them. Reusing is great, it means we can get new stuff for relatively effort and no new resources.

Please do not go chopping valves out of good inner tubes, that would be a real waste, instead go to your local bike shop with a big smile on your face and ask if they have any old tubes you can have. Willem from Thunderbikes in Wanaka very kindly supplied me with a heap of them. Thanks Willem!

The other item I went on the hunt for was wine corks. So put that big smile back on and pay a visit to your local restaurant and ask if they have any old wine corks you can have. They probably do. Jordy from Relishes kindly gave me a handful. Thanks Jordy!

Step 1

Cut the valve out of the inner tube with a sharp knife.

Step 2

Cut the cork in half using your sharp knife

Step 3

Get your drill, a drill bit the same size, if not a little smaller than the bike valve and drill a hole through the center of the cork. This is a good time to get an extra pair of hands, thanks Nev!

Step 4

Put the valve through the hole. Ensure the valve goes through smooth side and out of the rough side. This way, when we put the cork in the bottle the edge of the cork doesn’t destroy. If you don’t get it, trust me, it’s a good idea, stops your cork falling apart.

Step 4

Drill holes through the centre of your milk bottle caps

Step 5

Using the glue gun, glue the caps together

Step 6

Put holes in the side of the egg carton where you want your axels to go through

Step 7

Using the snippers cut a length of coat hanger long enough to pass through both wheels, the egg box and be able to be bent up at the ends to hold the wheels on

Step 8

Put the axel through the box, add the wheels and bend up the axel at either end. Now you should have the basis for your car

Step 8

Glue a wedge of some kind to the top of the box and then glue the bottle on top of the box, ensuring the bottle top is low down and sticking over the back of the box

Step 9

Put some water into the bottle

Step 10

Attach the bike pump to the end of the valve and push the cork into the end of the bottle

Step 11

Find an area you can launch the car on, remember get everyone to stand well away from the cars forward motion and have no one directly behind the car

Step 12

Start pumping and wait for the motion

Have fun out there, see you all on Saturday in Hampden.....

Endangered Species in Glenorchy Primary

Endangered species in Glenorchy? Who'd have thought it.....well the senior classrooms inquiry this term is all about endangered species. It had been a while since I've been up there so I figured I'd pay them a visit for the afternoon and combine it with the yearly summary meeting after school.

'Who am I? and where do I live?' on page 175 of the kit is the perfect activity for this. Thankfully Miss Reed had a wonderful collection of photos of endangered species to use for this activity. One by one each of the children comes to the front of the class and is given a photo of the animal. They aren't allowed to show anyone else the photo, well Miss Reed and I took a sneaky peek.

The rest of the class have to ask questions with yes no answers and try to figure out what the endangered species is. This then spawns really good active discussion about the habitat of these animals which we can link to activities that us wonderful humans partake in to destroy these valuable habitats and species.

Looking around school, the gardens and tunnel house are look superb and the chicken coop is almost done!!! If I hadn't been a fool and locked myself out of the office that morning I'd have lots of awesome pictures to show you all here. Oh well, you'll have to check back here soon to see pics of all the great work that is going on in Glenorchy. Well done!

Taking Action - Room 23 Queenstown Primary

Last week I took a sneaky peek at the vision maps created by Room 23 and I couldn't wait to get in the class room and see what the children had been discussing. Their inquiry is 'How to beautify our school'. They have these maps outside their classroom and invite anyone to add their suggestions to them.

I'd been asked if I could come and facilitate a session to help the children plan some action projects. Awesome, time for me to dig into the fabulous tools in Section 3 of the kit. One of my favourites.

We started with a brief discussion of all the things they would like to see in school, much of this was to do with animals, somehow I think that having a sea lion at school may be a bit much, however there is no reason why they can't take some action to help better the quality of life of sea lions within NZ.

With all the different ideas written down we made a decision making matrix and figured out which were the most popular projects, rabbits & worm farms seemed pretty popular.

Time to split into groups and get out the Action Planners, page 406 of the kit. I love this page, it is so powerful. We write down our vision at the top, eg. 'We want to use worms to take care of some of our organic waste'. We then start to investigate what we need to do in order to reach this vision. This page has different sections with guiding questions to help the children out. What we end up with is a list of tasks and ideas that we can take action upon. So simple, so powerful and so much fun. Well done Enviroschools for developing such a powerful tool.

The session was over in a flash, the classroom was a buzz of excited productive conversation. They've still got a fair bit of work to do to achieve these visions but they are on the right track. Well done Room 23!