Smiddles worm farm

After spending ages at Queenstown Primary I managed to inspire the smiddles, yep you read it right, they are kinda past being middles but not quite seniors, so smiddles they become.

There were 4 students from each of the three classes and we had a great morning. We had a chat about the action learning cycle and all the different stages to a successful project. Then we set about identifying our current situation.

We made a map of the smiddles classrooms and placed all the information we needed onto that. 3 possible worm farm sites and created some voting cards and arranged a public place to display it.

We figured out it would be a good idea to measure the amount of organic waste that was generated in a week. So one crew is measuring that. Some posters were made to advertise what kind of waste we were collecting and script was written for QPS news so we can tell the whole school about what is being done.

Some research was done into different worm farm designs and we now have a choice of two type. The stackable tyres and a bath tub. I think the volumes were talking about will show us that the tyres are the best option. Keep your eyes peeled here for progress.

And before you look at the pics, I should perhaps mention it was crazy hair day too. Thank you so much Mrs. Walker for sorting me out a green mohican. It certainly started a few conversations back here upon my return.

Project Te Radar

At Kahu youth we decided that it would be awesome to invite Te Radar to come and visit us on World Environment Day.To make our invitation as cool and irresistible as possible we've decided to make a video.

We reckon he should come and visit Wanaka and help us inspire more people to join us on our regeneration mission! We are making a short film to show Te Radar all the cool things we can offer him when he visits.

Rob made a mean sign to use as a prop. When we were out on location we did realise that the next sign that gets made needs to be double sided, then you can point it in any direction. Meg is going to make him dinner and we'll take him to Wanaka Station Park for some fresh home grown walnuts Wanaka style.

ReGeneration - Deep South

I'm sure you will all remember the Regeneration tour of last year that visited us here in Wanaka and jammed with us for the day.

One of  the things the ReGeneration project aims to do is bring young motivated people together to learn about issues that we are facing and figure out what we can change and do in our towns and country to make the transisiton into future times as easy as possible.

Jinty and many others worked tirelessly on Deep South. 80 young people from across Otago, Southland and Canterbury came together at Puketeraki marae for four days. Holy smokes I don't think I've ever felt so motivated.

Rather than spend ages summing up here, why don't you have a look at the amazing reflection document Jinty has made about the event? You can learn about how we split into three groups, land, coast and water on the Friday. The workshops we took part in on Saturday and all the other super cool times we had in between.

We also made a Google map to document all the action we took part in on the Friday. I'm very excited about the possibilities that the latest technology surrounding maps can bring to help us all promote and synchronise our actions.


View ReGeneration Deep South 2010 in a larger map

Queenstown Primary have an Envirogroup

On a Thursday lunch time two students from each of the syndicates at Queenstown Primary get together to meet to discus all the wonderful Enviroschools work they are doing. They've created roles for everyone to do, a secretary, a reporter, a photographer even a presenter for QPS news. Everyone has a job to do.

This will really help to bring together all the work they are doing and help achieve a truly whole school approach. Well done Mrs. Gray, Ms. Reed and everyone else at Queenstown Primary.

Recycling and Compost at Queenstown Primary

Once again it looks like my skills of keeping this blog ultra fresh have escaped me. Hold on tight and get ready of a series of posts to sum up term 2 so far, and boy has it been a busy one.

The term started with a mammoth Zero Waste Education booking at Queenstown Primary. Two teams, two units. Recycling and compost were the subjects and I had a ball working with these 7 classes.

Their school camp this year visited Stewart Island and they wanted to be armed with heaps of knowledge about these two subjects.

I had an absolute ball teaching these units. The responses from each of the classes was amazing, as it always is. During the Recycling unit we look at life cycles and you could just see the amazement on everyone's faces as we explored all of the parts of the process it takes to make a steel can. It certainly makes you think twice about throwing a can in the bin and not in the recycling. What I like best though is it really makes you think twice or ten times before buying something that can't be refilled.

The compost unit is always good fun, although on the make the worm farm day I must admit it gets a little frantic for me to really enjoy myself. I hear that some pretty neat worm farms get made but I don;t always get to see them all......I snapped these pics from Mrs. Fergussons class, I'm sure you'll agree that everyone was having a ball.

Wanaka - The Vision Map

We have started adding the photos and activities we discovered last week onto Google Maps. You can look at the Kahu Youth Google Map here

Enviroschools at Kahu Youth....

Last week a few of us got together at Kahu Youth to discus the kinds of activities and projects that we would like to achieve in Wanaka for young people. One of the things that came up was that there is possibly a lot of stuff to do in Wanaka that no body really tells us about....

Since it's now school holidays we have Tuesday's down at the Crib set aside for Enviroschools activities. This week we set about finding out what these activities could be.....Myself, Richard, Rob, Jarrod and Noel all went on a journey of discovery.

First stop the library, perhaps their notice board would reveal a few activities to do....Nah, well nothing that we thought was that interesting. But did you know the uber fish feeding spot was just outside the library? I didn't, and judging by the amount of fish we saw in the creek neither did they.

We had heard though that you can buy fish food from the jet boat people in the log cabin and then feed the eels off the warf. I was a little sceptical, I mean how comes I hadn't heard about this before? But....for $2 you get a plastic cup full of stinky fish food, all we need now are some monsters of the deep and not hungry ducks.

After a quick stop for a bite to eat we ventured towards the Real Art road show. This is the uber mobile art gallery, started by a very kind lady from Wanaka. These refrigeration trucks hold lots of cool art and get driven around the country taking art to high schools and communities that don't normally have it. There are two trailers, one had left, but the other had heaps of cool stuff inside. Check www.realartroadshow.co.nz for more details.

One of our main missions for the afternoon was to get to Wanaka Station Park at the Roys Bay end of town. We'd heard about this place and thought there may be some cool fruit trees and generally fun outdoor places to hang out in. Pembroke park, with all it's size, is kinda boring, no trees, nothing much to do apart from a skate park, surely there has to be somewhere else instead.

On the way, amidst much discussion of conkers and how we don't seem to have any conker trees in NZ, we stopped off to practice skimming stones on the lake. It would appear that to skim well you need a very still calm lake, the slightest ripple causes your perfect skimming stone to be projected high up into the air and then sinking straight to the bottom the next time it hits the surface.....hmmmm. Still very good fun though.

Eventually we get to Wanaka Station Park, you have to look for a small sign at the bottom of the steps leading off the lakeside walking track. Once up there it was like a whole new world was opening up. A completely different feel to many of the outdoor public places in Wanaka. Large old trees everywhere and yes, quite a lot of fruit on the floor.

It didn't take too long to find a pear tree which a few people had beaten us to. Nothing ripe here......but we did find an enormous tree with lots of casings under it. What could this be? After throwing a few sticks up into the branches, rather reminiscent of getting conkers in the UK, we discovered that this was indeed a walnut tree. SICK!

After a little more exploring guess what I found? Yes, a conker tree, bursting with conkers....woo hoo. If you don't know about conkers then keep an eye on this blog, there will be a full description of what to do with conkers. Any of you readers who have spent any time in the UK at Autumn will be very aware of this ever popular game.

With our pockets and bags now bulging with the natural bounty we had foraged for, we realised it was time to get back to the Crib having had a way cool afternoon. We spent hardly anything and had heaps of fun.So it is possible to do this in Wanaka without playing sport.

What we need to do now is add some of this information to a map so we can share the information with others. We are looking at how we do this with Google maps and even a paper copy to go somewhere. For anyone familiar with Enviroschools you could be thinking "is this the start a vision map of Wanaka in the making", if you are, you'd be 100% right.........