Sustainability at Croydon West Primary School

Nest designs: Art work inspired by Nature.

2011-11-14T16:52:00.000+11:00

Nature and the environment is often the inspiration for a range of lessons in my classes. Students in Level 3/4 looked at some amazing nests both man made art works and real nests made by a range of creatures. I asked them to create a nest from terra cotta clay using some ideas they had seen. We bisque fired them.....still thinking of the next stage (colour? glaze?) but they are lovely just as they are!

In the kiln....

More cocoons....Level 3/4

2011-11-14T16:25:00.000+11:00

Our older students were interested in the cocoons made by the junior grades. After looking at a variety of found cocoons and images of some really funky ones from the internet, they collected a range of materials from outside as a starting point to make their own. They started by wrapping wadding or wool onto their chosen stick.

They added the natural materials collected from our school gardens borrowing some ideas from nature.

After designing, cutting, gluing, organising etc. they all agreed that nature's designs are amazing!!!!

Organic Gardening.

2011-10-19T21:17:00.002+11:00

This year, our school has been involved with the Biological Farmers of Australia's Organic School Gardens Program. We have been selected as a Leader School and we are trialing a range of lessons which are helping us to develop skills and knowledge on how to garden organically. For some time in our gardens, we have made gardening decisions which are based on making sure we consider the environment. These lessons have taken our organic practice much further.

These lessons and resource materials are available free to everyone and offer extensive background material and equipment lists to each topic.
Look here to check it out. Organic School Gardens Program

Last week we tested the pH of the soils in our various gardens. We hoped to be able to find out why some plants were thriving and some struggling. We also had a new garden planned and wondered whether the pH of the introduced soil would allow our plants to take up the nutrients readily.
A simple pH testing kit and various soil samples was all we needed. We discovered our Peace Garden's soil was quite acidic and explained why we had some issues with some plants. We were happy to find out that the Mandala Vegetable Garden's soil was in the correct range for growing veggies. Another area of the school garden tested quite alkaline.
Students learnt about how we could increase or decrease the pH as needed and how our compost will help create a healthy soil.

Here are our tested samples.

Cocoons.

2011-10-18T23:29:00.001+11:00

Students are fascinated (as I am) with some of the cocoons we have found in our school garden and at our homes. Level 1 and 2 students created these amazing cocoons using stockings, stretching a cocoon shape with bamboo sticks. Once they created the shape, they painted them in natural colours. When they were dry, they added natural materials from our school ground.
Students considered what a cocoon is, the range of types of cocoon structures, materials used and how they may have been constructed.

Here are some of their cocoon sculptures.

Endangered! Update on our art work.

2011-10-18T22:51:00.001+11:00

Here is an update on Level 3/4's art works about endangered creatures. Students considered the various reasons some species become endangered. They created their own endangered animal, thinking about its habitat, reasons for its fragile situation, food sources and particular features of their creature.
They created clay tiles showing the creature's skin, feathers or fur, the animal's eye and a special feature of their creature.
These tiles have now been fired and students have attached them to a background which shows the habitat of their creature.
Other art works included amazing drawings using pastels and some great mini sculptures made from paperclay.

What makes a good friend?

2011-09-18T22:08:00.002+10:00

Level 2/3 students have been discussing how to be a good friend in their unit on social justice this term. After brainstorming words describing friends, what friends do and how friends act, students made some friendship stones using stones from our Discovery Garden. Many decided to give their stones to their friends when they finished creating them.

Check out our Level 1 and 2 Blog!!

2011-09-05T20:02:00.001+10:00

Click here ( Level 1 and 2 Blog ) to check out a blog started by Chantal, one of our Level 1 and 2 teachers.

This term our whole school has been exploring issues of social justice.
Level 1/2 students have particularly been studying how we can make a difference in the lives of animals we care for and how to make changes in the way animals are treated in Australia and in fact around the world.

Students guided by the teachers, have identified problems and injustices in realition to how animals are treated. Through talking and sharing, students have created their action board which indicates how they can make a difference.

They visited Edgar's Mission recently in order to further gain information on problems with some farm animals.

This resulted in students participating in a HUGE WheatBix drive to donate to Edgar's Mission to feed the animals.

Students are also preparing produce for a shop in which they will sell items they have created in their class. They have made some wonderful tshirts (amongst many other things) which have slogans showing their thoughts about how aimals should be treated.

It is amazing to see how empowered these young people (aged 5 and 6) are and how they know that they are able to make a difference. This is a very important message to our students. They can see that if they identify a problem, they can creatively and co-operatively work out ways to create solutions.
Clever kids....thoughtful teachers.....

Signs of Spring in our gardens.

2011-09-01T22:10:00.001+10:00

Today is the first day of Spring and it was a perfect day to work and play outside. Teachers took the opportunity with their students to spend time in our gorgeous gardens.
One group of students looked at our proposed new chook area, measuring and researching possible designs.
Another group enjoyed their literacy session in and around our Mandala Veggie Garden and our Gazebo area.
I took my Sustainable Futures classes outside today. We celebrated Wattle Day by learning about the Wattle, our national floral emblem. We then went on a search to see how many wattle or acacia trees we have in out gardens. We have over ten, many of these being different types of wattles. We took small cuttings of three different kinds to stick into our journals. Lots of discussion with each other followed, talking about differences, similarities etc.
Most of the school headed outside to eat their lunch together in our central courtyard Discovery garden area. It is so wonderful to see the Level 1 students sitting with the Level 4s and enjoying one another's company.
After lunch Level 3/4 students continued to maintain and prepare our veggie patch for some Spring planting.

Our Bird Restaurant is officially open!!

2011-09-01T21:43:00.000+10:00

The Bird Restaurant is situated in the Bush Tucker garden which has many trees, bushes, and grasses.......perfect for encouraging bird into our garden.

Bird watching at our school....

2011-09-01T21:28:00.003+10:00

With our Bird Restaurant now officially open, students are reporting sightings of many different birds visiting the area. At recess or lunch break, students take out our Bird Watching Kit to help them identify the birds we have in our school gardens.

In the kit, students use laminated pictures I have made, a chart and a field guide of Australian birds (The Slater Field Guide for Australian Birds) to identify their bird sightings. Students also have a chart to record the birds they see. They record the name and description of the bird, where and when it was sighted. I intend to add some small binoculars to the kit....for fun!

Kids are amazing!! They now see so many birds and are finding them really interesting, telling me of many different birds they have seen at home, over the weekend and on the way to school.....and they know what kind of bird it is!

Hundreds of babies in my house!!

2011-08-16T22:01:00.002+10:00

Some time ago, a praying mantis decided to lay her eggs on a plant in my house. Praying mantis egg cases are very interesting as she lays sometimes hundreds of eggs in a really interesting formation then covers them with a kind of foam which then hardens to protect the eggs until the "big day"! The egg mass is called an ootheca and is firmly attached to the plant.
I had been watching the ootheca for a while but then forgot about it until.......I noticed hundreds of little creatures (baby mantis) on and around the plant.
I watched amazed as I discovered more and more of these miniature creatures. I carefully collected as many as I could and gently placed them outside, hoping for the best as I think they may have hatched a little early (my heater confused them I think).

This is the ootheca....

I used a toothpick to collect them!

..and I was still finding them the next day...

Click here Baby Praying Mantis hatching to see an interesting video!

Preparing for Spring in our gardens

2011-08-16T21:34:00.001+10:00

Last week our students worked very hard to add mulch to our garden beds using some lovely woodchip mulch donated by local tree loppers some time ago. It had begun to break down and in some areas was perfect to add to our veggie patch as a top up for our beds. We could see the effects of fungi breaking down this organic matter allowing wonderful nutrients to be available to our soil.

We had lots of fun working together shovelling and wheelbarrowing our mulch.....

Then we had a bit of a dig in our Mandala Garden getting our beds ready for planting.....

...which was great fun. We found lots of worms and creatures some of which became treats for our chooks!

Unofficial Opening of our Bird Restaurant....

2011-08-04T22:07:00.005+10:00

Today level 2/3 students had an unofficial opening of our bird restaurant. We had read the story of Oliver's Restaurant. (see previous post here) Today we added some of the elements in the story such as:

water in our bird bath
seed in our bird feeder
we unmoulded our special bird pudding and placed it in our favourite tree in the Bush Tucker Garden.

Then armed with our bird book and a chart about birds in our part of Australia, we sat very quietly in our nearby Peace Garden to see who came to our restaurant. We heard and saw many birds but no birds availed themselves of our feast. Behind where we were sitting, were many birds taking a dip in our frog habitat pond so we are sure they will discover our restaurant soon.
We plan further activity and food items for our bird attracting area so stay posted!

We now have a register for students to fill in to record the name and description of the bird they see and when and where they were sighted.
Have you conducted an audit of the birds in your school grounds?

Japanese Peace Day August 6th......

2011-08-03T20:04:00.003+10:00

On August 6th at 8.15 in 1945, The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan and three days later on Nagasaki. These are the only atomic bombs used by any country.
Japan remembers this day, holding a Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima to remember the 140,000 people who died after the atomic bomb was dropped, in the hope that nuclear weapons will never be used again.
It seemed a timely opportunity to revisit the inspirational story of Sadako who was two when the bomb was dropped and passed away as a young 12 year old from radiation sickness.
We chose to focus on peace in our art lessons and we talked about friendships, acceptance, diversity and building bridges.
Some students chose to make some huge peace cranes, painting them and adding wonderful colour, some writing "peace on their wings to spread peace all over the world" ....just as Sadako intended.
Some students collected stones from our Discovery Garden and created some "peace stones" to place in our Peace Garden .

A symbolic gesture...reaching a hand of friendship out to others.

These seats are part of our Peace Garden. They are our Friendship Seats.

Some girls were drawn to our nearby Bush Tucker Garden where they left a message of peace in the sand path....

Wouldn't it be fabulous.................maybe this generation???

Want a great place to take your kids? Try Hedgend Maze!

2011-08-02T22:44:00.002+10:00

Tonight after school, instead of our staff meeting, our staff visited Hedgend Maze in Healesville where we heard about the inspiration behind this great place. Liz and Lee took us around this wonderful setting showing us how their many educational programs would add value to units of work in a school or kinder setting. They also have an extensive holiday program. Underpinning all their programs is a strong sustainability focus, from dealing with their waste to how they garden. (and probably heaps more....)

Lee tells us about the organic veggie patch.

Herbs from the garden are picked fresh to add to pizza dough cooked by the students.

Lee explained the process to recover a pond which had runoff from chemicals from previous farming. It now has five different types of frogs.

Signage all around Hedgend encourages vistors to consider many issues facing our environment.

The Dinosaur Dig is "irresistible" and provides many learning opportunities while having heaps of fun!

The setting is wonderful....I love the Yarra Valley!

Nearly forgot the very cute chooks....

There is really much, much more......you have to visit!!!
Arrghh....forgot to take photos of the mazes!! Having too much fun I expect....

Making connections....

2011-07-30T22:03:00.010+10:00

After reading Rachel Tonkin's wonderful book "Leaf Litter", we began to think about the connections each animal and plant had to one another in this habitat.

After drawing a huge tree on the floor with chalk onto the carpet (.....sorry....to our cleaner), I gave the kids a a card with an animal or plant on it from our story. Starting with one student, other students joined in one by one, explaining the connection as they joined the habitat of the tree.

We then took this concept a bit further. Each creature (student) took the end of a stretchy ribbon and made a connection with another creature. More and more connections were made until it was truly an interconnected web.

We had a lot of fun while the kids learnt how the food chain is linked.

Students also thought about possible interruptions to the food chain and the implications to the creatures and their habitat.

We've Got the Whole World in Our Hands.......

2011-07-29T22:50:00.001+10:00

How careful we must be to work together to keep everything in balance...... in order to keep our planet healthy.

Oliver's Restaurant...for birds...

2011-07-29T22:29:00.003+10:00

A few weeks ago, Jack's mum Kiran told me about a story she had recently read to her children and she thought it might be of interest to my students. It is a lovely story about a little boy, Oliver, who decided to make a restaurant for birds in his garden. He asked all the members of his family what should be on his menu and he followed through to complete his idea, finally opening his restaurant.

As we read and discussed this story, our students began to realise that in our gardens we already provide a vast range of food for birds.

They suggested however that they would like to use the area in the Bush Tucker Garden to develop their Croydon West Primary School Restaurant for Birds. We discussed the issue of providing food for animals in the wild and what problems it may create.
Last week the students made the special bird pudding which Oliver's aunty suggested. There was no real recipe but we added some birdseed, melted lard and honey as in the story.

Next week we will set up our restaurant with a menu, signs, birdseed on our bird feeder, special bird pudding, water in our birdbath, insects (plenty around!), flowering plants (already there!) and some spiky plants for the birds' protection (our Native Finger Lime should do the trick).

The strings are set into the puddings so that we can hang them...that's the theory at this stage..... :)

The students made a menu design for the restaurant including their ideas about what a bird might find tasty in our garden. Thankyou Kiran for this great little story. It has provided much discussion for our students!

This is where the students have decided to have our bird restaurant. It also has a wonderful flowering gum which attracts Rainbow Lorikeets at different times of the year....fascinating to watch and hear!

Has anybody any more great ideas for attracting birds into our garden??

Author and passionate organic gardener, Dee Pigneguy visits our school.

2011-07-27T20:31:00.004+10:00

It is great to be able to share with others what we do at our school. It was a great honour when we were contacted by Dee Pigneguy, a New Zealand author, organic garden consultant and gardener asking if she could come to see our school garden.
Dee is currently writing a book advising schools how to best develop their gardens. Her other books Feed Me Right, Nature's Technotricks , Gardening for Planet Earth (and a resource for teachers for Feed Me Right) are practical, informative and engaging. Her vast knowledge and passion about nature and living well while keeping our planet healthy is evident in the books.
My students were very excited to be able to take Dee and Samantha, her friend around our school to see all our gardens and the various elements in each. The students talked about the way these gardens began and how many of the gardens have been designed, created and maintained by them. The gardens have been developed during the time these students have been at the school, which has given them ownership and loyalty of the areas.

Dee shared ideas about gardening organically with us while enjoying seeing how we have developed our gardens. I had kept an early photo album to document the garden journey so it was great to show before and after shots!

Dee asked our students to write a piece about our school gardens telling the way they feel they are connected to them with the possibility of it being included in her new book.
Wow! Needless to say, the kids are quite excited by the prospect and are motivated by this idea.

Dee Pigneguy.

One of our very popular chooks, Cream.

In our Peace Garden

Our banana grove.

Sitting in the gorgeous Winter sun.

Demonstrating our hand water pump.

Thanks Samantha for bringing Dee to us.

Our Frog habitat.

Bush Tucker Garden

One of our many wattles is flowering.

Dee is talking to our students about her writing.

Using nature for inspiration.....

2011-07-06T22:57:00.000+10:00

We are very lucky to have gardens at our school which provide inspiration for our art works and for learning and playing in. Students collected a variety of leaves from our gardens to impress into rolled clay slabs which they made into nature pockets (Level 1 and 2) and beautiful nature bowls (Level 2 and 3). These images show our unfired work. We are looking forward to being able to fire them in our new kiln soon.

Endangered!!

2011-07-06T18:45:00.003+10:00

Last term, Level 3 and 4 students were considering why some species have become endangered. While formulating their understandings of what it means, they were asked to create an "endangered" creature in Art classes, considering why this may have occured and why this "ficticious" creature is important.
Using "artist's language" students were asked to think about the skin, fur, or feathers and the special features of their creature.
They made a series of three clay tiles which showed the texture, the eye and the claw, beak, tail, etc. of their creature. These will be fired in our new kiln.

They then made a tiny sculpture of their creature using Magic Paper Clay. They had to refer to their many drawings and clay modelling experiences to make sure their ideas link together.

Nature Folk.....level 2 and 3 artists

2011-07-06T18:16:00.000+10:00

After the recent arrival of fairies in our garden, level 2 and 3 students were inspired to create some art work using Nature's art box which included leaves, grasses, flowers and bark from our school gardens. They created gorgeous Nature Folk, enjoying some beautiful winter sunshine as we worked outside.

How cute are these.....

BFA

2011-07-03T21:55:00.000+10:00

Organic Farming at Croydon West!

2011-07-03T21:22:00.001+10:00

We have been lucky to be awarded a place in the Biological Farmers of Australia's Organic School Gardens Program as a Leader School. For many years we have taken a conscious decision in our gardens to make sure we make responsible and sustainable choices when choosing organic products to use in our gardens. We have made our own natural pest sprays, composted our organic waste, made use of our chook manure and used our precious worm wee from our wormeries on our plants, to name a few.

It is an honour to be selected as a Leader School and we hope that by trialling the Organic School Gardens lessons and being a part of the program, we can not only learn much more about organic gardening, but we may be able to link up with other schools, sharing ideas about our gardens.
Thank you to Biological Farmers of Australia for this opportunity.

Transition Town, Maroondah

2011-06-26T22:56:00.009+10:00

I have just returned from a local Transition Town meeting tonight after being invited to attend. The aim of the Transition Town Maroondah organisation is to raise awareness of sustainable living and build local ecological resilience in the near future. Enthusiastic groups all over the world are working towards making a difference in making our planet healthier.
The speaker tonight was Dr Andrew Monk who spoke about organic farming in Australia and the role of BFA (Biological Farmers of Australia). It was great to hear him speak about the BFA Organic School Gardens Program in which we are a Leader School. We are using lesson and resource material from BFA to educate our students about the advantages of organic gardening, applying what we have learnt to our school gardens. We are also reflecting back some of our ideas in order to help refine the lessons for other schools.

It is interesting how we constantly make new connections with others who have the same passion about caring for our planet in the way we make choices in our lives. I am confident that our young students are moving in the right direction confidently beginning to influence others. It's great to think that they are being supported by groups such as BFA and Transition Towns.

In Transition Video

This video tells some of the philosophy behind Transition Towns and how the movement came about. It is well worth watching to learn about why we need to change our ideas on how we use oil.

I love the comment about not waiting for everyone else to fix things but just getting on with things ourselves.....

Fairies in our Garden!!

2011-06-14T21:21:00.004+10:00

How excited we were the other day to discover that fairies have moved into our garden.....
The appearance of tiny little fairy doors has enchanted our students who enjoy playing and decorating the tiny gardens of our resident fairies. Teeny, tiny fairy letters have been written to our students, who have responded with letters and drawings telling the fairies to stay. This has been a great opportunity for us to discuss what habitats are and the part we can play to keep them healthy.
A new little fairy size letterbox has been installed allowing a magical exchange between the fairies and our students.
Students have created some gorgeous art works about their ideas of what fairy folk look like. (images to follow).

Searching for clues......

Magnifying glasses were needed for tiny clues....

...and then we found a teeny tiny leather satchell.....

...but what was inside??

A little letter to our students asking if they can stay in our garden!

"Of course!" said the kids.

Beautiful Badger Weir

2011-05-29T21:52:00.005+10:00

This term, our whole school's integrated study has been about Sustainability. Each class normally has one session each week called Sustainable Futures in which we explore issues of living sustainably. Sustainable processes in our school are firmly in place and the norm. However as a whole school and across all levels we decided that we would use Sustainability as the driver for all curriculum areas.

Level 3 and 4 students went on an excursion last week to beautiful Badger Weir to look at a pristine environment and to see how and where some of our water is harvested. The water catchment area surrounding the weir has been managed for more that 100 years.
They also went to a water treatment plant as a contrast to see how waste water is treated in order for it to be ready to reuse.
I was lucky to be asked to go along!

The students were asked to choose a mini environment by placing their hoop over an area that interested them. They were given small flags which they positioned to highlight points of interest in their "park". They explained the reason for their choices, deciding on a name for their "park". Students then became tour leaders, showing others around their "park", explaining why it is so significant and special.

It was a freezing day but we were so surprised to see that the beautiful sunshine had heated up this magnificent tree and Jake just had to hug the tree...as then others did...how wonderful!

....and when we looked up, this was the canopy of this gorgeous old tree.

At the Water Treatment Facillity we learnt about all that is being done for the environment.

This wet land area is home to a diverse range of creatures and through different plantings, the water moving through is filtered by nature before joining the waterway, the Yarra.

We learnt about how the waste water is treated using natural bacteria and ways we can help such as being mindful of what goes into our waste water (eg. non organic material is a big problem as is washing powder with phosphates).

It was certainly an interesting excursion and highlighted the importance of these treatment plants and scientists and workers dealing with waste water in such a sustainable way. Of course we have a responsibility too, to make sure we do the right thing in our kitchens, bathrooms, laundries, gardens etc....

Rainbow Sticks for our Peace Garden

2011-05-29T20:48:00.001+10:00

Level 1 and 2 created some Rainbow Sticks for our Peace Garden after discussions about what "Peace" means and brainstorming about making our friendship seats, a pleasant place to sit. We looked at symbols of peace, the rainbow being one of them.

Rainbow sticks...all in place ready.....

...for sisters.....

......and brothers....

...and friends....

....to try out on the way home....

What is a herb?

2011-05-29T19:50:00.003+10:00

Students in Level 1, 2 and 3 have learnt about herbs and their uses. As we have many different herbs in our garden, it was great to be able to harvest these for my lessons. We talked about the importance of herbs and how they are used.

Students explored what they looked like and what kind of smell they had.

In small groups students discussed the features of their herb, recording their observations.

Then we made a gorgeous herbed tea....

...which we all loved!

We tried one with mint, lemon and honey...scrummy.....

Then we dried some oregano for when there is none in our garden.

Level 1 and 2 students took some cuttings of Rosemary which they propagated. We are planning to grow a Rosemary hedge in our Peace Garden.

We wash our recycled pots.....

We fill up our pots with organic propagating soil.....

After stripping the lower leaves and cutting off the top leaves, we dip our cutting into honey, a great and safe alternative to hormone powder......

We make a little hole into the soil......

...and place our little cutting into the soil, pressing firmly around the cutting....

...and voila.....our little cutting is almost ready with its label.....

But first a little drink......

and now to find a sheltered spot in our garden for them to grow!

Wish us luck!!

YAAAAAAYYYY! WE HAVE FROGS....

2011-05-18T18:52:00.005+10:00

If I am staying back at school and it has become dark, I am usually in my Art Studio or Sustainable Futures Room...... BUT......last night I was preparing for our Open Night at our school and visited our library which is near our Frog Habitat. We created this habitat several years ago and have been patiently waiting for frogs to come and stay. (Build it and they will come....)
I heard a cute little creaking noise and could not believe my ears.....WE HAVE FROGS!!! Maybe we have had them for a while and I just didn't listen at the right time (Night, when all the kids have gone...??)
For some time we have been searching for evidence of frogs in our Frog Habitat and felt that it was a perfect environment but had never found any.
Sooooo...stay tuned as we research what kind of frog has taken up residence in our Frog Habitat.

What a great report card indicating the health of our school environment!

The Colours of Nature......

2011-05-01T22:48:00.001+10:00

In a lesson focussing on the diversity of colour in nature, Level 2 and 3 students used framing samples to match them to colours in nature. Having discussed colours they could see in our gardens previously, students discovered many different shades and intensities of greens, blues, greys, whites, browns etc.They then used watercolour pencils to try to replicate the colour.
Next week will create a name for their colour. They will use descriptive words to describe the time of day, the intensity of colour, an emotion and/or a word descibing the temperature of the colour.

And in the process of exploring colour in nature....an amazing Preying Mantis joined our class...how wonderful!

How do we find out about the world?

2011-05-01T22:17:00.001+10:00

Our Level 1 and 2 students know the best way to find out about our world is to use our senses. Our new Level 1 students are learning all about our great gardens, with our Sensory Garden being an inspirational place to start. Exploring the Sensory Garden highlights the importance of using our senses to understand our world.

Bush Tucker Garden....some success!

2011-04-30T22:53:00.003+10:00

We began our Bush Tucker garden some time ago and I use it regularly in my Sustainable Futures Lessons. We have lost some plants and have had massive growth from others.

Students know that they must not eat from this garden without permission as they don't have the indigenous knowledge about how they need to be prepared. We did however enjoy a little taste of the fruit from the Australian Finger Lime from the garden this week. It has a unique fresh and tangy taste which explodes in your mouth. We are hanging out for another to grow on this healthy looking bush.

This 8 cm fruit contained hundreds of tangy little juicy balls...which look like caviar!

Another surprise recently was finding fruit on our Davidson's Plum which is also an indigenous food plant. This plant grows its fruit on the trunk of the tree. The fruit was not very sweet with a very sour taste. We are looking forward to our next harvest to explore its uses.

Twiggy, our stick insect visitor

2011-04-30T22:30:00.005+10:00

For some time at our school we have enjoyed a visit from Twiggy, a stick insect (Ctenomorpha Chronus)who provided much inspiration and learning opportunities for our students.
She had laid hundreds of eggs (which we still have) and had been carefully handled and examined by all the children who were fascinated by her.
Just before the holidays we decided that she should return to her favourite type of tree. One exciting day we released her after school, with many students bringing their parents to see where she had climbed to. The kids were so in tune with finding her amongst the foliage iin her cage that they could see where she had gone.....the parents had some trouble however.
I loved the fact that although they loved her, they were equally excited about her being released. We now await to see if her eggs hatch.......maybe in a few months.
Here are some artworks from our Level 1 and 2 students who found twings in the garden to make "Twiggy" and create her habitat.

My Country....How Amazing...

2011-03-22T20:51:00.005+11:00

We have certainly experienced some of the amazing contrasts our country to offer recently in terms of natural disasters. It was with this in mind when I planned a series of lessons in my Art classes earlier this year for my level 3 and 4 students.
Dorothea Mackellar's poem which many Aussies fondly know includes the following phrases:

I love sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons.

I love her jewelled sea.

Her beauty and her terror,

The wide brown land for me.

This is part of the poem which was written by Mackellar as a young homesick woman living away from her homeland and was written around a hundred years ago. I felt it fitted well into my lessons about the environment as discussions challenged the students to think about our part in climate change, the importance of caring for pristine environments and the fragility of biodiversity.
As an art teacher, I loved the way the students talked about the environment using artists' language describing colour, texture, tone, shapes, distortion, exaggageration, pattern, repetition etc. In small groups, students were given a phrase from the poem and they worked together to brainstorm what their phrase meant. They all recorded their ideas and explorations on a large piece of paper. They then created mini artworks which they would present together on a background also reflecting their phrase.

As this group included years 4 to 6, the students had to consider how to make sure everyone's ideas were heard.

These images show a some of the group's brainstorming and exploration of materials and ideas.

Choosing a special spot in our garden.

2011-03-01T22:25:00.006+11:00

At the beginning of every year, I ask my students to choose a special spot in our school gardens in which they take time to observe changes, sit quietly and notice sounds, sights, smells and textures. It is an opportunity for my students to get right into the garden, to become fascinated with all that nature has to offer and to make connections with their environment. Each time I ask students to reflect in their journal in different ways by drawing, writing or perhaps collecting special teasures from their "spot".
Although they can choose a new spot, some students often choose to return to their spot from previous years which I feel indicates the strong connection they have made.

I love how respectful each student is of their space and how peaceful this part of my lesson is. Afterwards we shared with each other why we chose this space. I loved hearing how these 7 and 8 year olds felt about their spot.

Jacob's (Level 2) journal entry....Why I love my Spot

1 Because there's lovely birds there

2 Because there's thousands of trees that give us oxygen

3 Because there's a bird house for birds to come in.

4 Because there's food you can eat that is healthy.

and finally 5..Because the bird sings loud and lovely........sigh......I love it!

Phew....hot again.

2011-02-02T19:30:00.002+11:00

Some months ago, we discovered that a swarm of bees had taken up residence in one of our possum boxes in my garden. It has been fascinating to observe the activity of these busy and important creatures in our back yard.
Through these hot days however, the bees seem like they are regulating the hive's temperature by moving outside the box and have at times hung from the roof of the box and around the entrance.
I have loved these inhabitants in our garden and LOVE the beautiful honey smell that fills the air in that part of the garden.
......now to find out a way that they could share some of their precious honey with me...but then again I want them to feel safe and stay in our garden ....so will just admire them from afar!

Back to School....

2011-02-01T23:12:00.004+11:00

It was so HOT today as we teachers headed back to school to prepare for our students who begin on Friday. The garden, while in need of a bit of TLC was looking surprisingly great with some serious growing having taken place through the holidays.
Our Sensory Garden is so overgrown that it will be tricky walking around the lavender spiral. I am resisting trimming it now before the kids come back as I really want the kids to harvest the lavender flowers and for us to use them in different ways.
Our Garden Angels, who watered the garden through the holidays have done a great job and we thank these wonderful families very much for their hard work! Thankyou!!!

How wonderful....

2011-01-31T23:26:00.005+11:00

In my own garden this week we have been fortunate to experience some great moments.

It has been sooooooo hot over the last few days. It was most surprising to have a stunning blue tongued lizard visit our garden yesterday on one of the hottest days (probably the hottest!) this summer. After a fabulous time observing this little guy, we released him back into the garden, hoping to spot him again sometime....

The famous blue tongue.....tricky to photograph. He was pretty quick!

Another visitor to our garden was this enormous stick insect (I think it is a Ctenomorpha Chronus). I researched how to care for this beautiful and fascinating creature and my husband and I made a funky cage for her from an old drawer we found on one of our walks. She is most comfortable, having laid 21 eggs to date.....maybe more by tomorrow! I will be taking her to school this week to take up residence in my classroom. I'm sure the kids will love her as much as I do and I look forward to their research on this 17.5 cm long phasmid.

I think her presence may be a great starter for some art sessions too....

She was just "hanging around" on our guttering.....Here is an old drawer made into a great cage complete with a hinged door. Thanks Steve!!

These are her eggs. They may take 4 months or longer to hatch. How exciting!

Everything we do has a consequence...

2011-01-28T22:39:00.004+11:00

Sadly our environment often is affected just by us being in it. This was evident at some of the beautiful beaches I visited at the Bellarine Peninsular in Victoria, these holidays. Thoughtless littering, while not nearly as bad as past years, amazes and saddens me as to why people think it's ok...

Even fishing produces some problems......

I wonder what happened to the group of Little Penguins which had died on a beach we walked along. I was fascinated to see up close however, the beautiful blue feathers, tiny wings and amazing webbed feet of these gorgeous little creatures.

Nature's artwork.....

2011-01-28T22:20:00.002+11:00

Just thought I'd share some of the beautiful artwork provided by Mother Nature, whose gallery I enjoyed down at the beach through my holidays......love the colours, textures, patterns, forms, contrasts, lines, etc.

2011-01-12T22:04:00.001+11:00

We are all thinking of our fellow Australians in Queensland and New South Wales as they face dangers, tragedy and hardship from the floods.

Water Play is fun....and possible!

2011-01-10T23:17:00.008+11:00

Readers from Australia will understand the demise of "water play opportunities" for children in many areas of Australia where strict water restrictions have changed the way we use water.
When we designed our Discovery Garden, the students included an area where they could play with water in their designs.
We included a hand pump which reuses water.

We also have many rainwater tanks which we use for watering our gardens, providing water for our toilets, chooks and guilt free water play. Students use the tanks with care as they have learnt to respect how scarce it is at times. Luckily we have had some great rainfalls this Summer so exploring and playing with water has been possible, within reason.

I must say that "yard duty" at our school is never an arduous task as most students are totally engaged in some interesting and fun activity of their own choosing, usually involving interacting with our natural environment in some way.
This particular day I came across a group of a very industrious team who had set up buckets, sand from the nearby sandpit, calling out to many customers to come and get a "tattoo"! The tattoo consisted of a design drawn onto their arm with a wet stick and dry sand sprinkled on top!!
Very inventive.... I got one too!

Fun with the water pump...... A great co-operative activity!

Mud play is a popular activity in the Fairy Garden.

These were "delicious" mud balls!

Amazing blue eggs!!!

2011-01-10T22:48:00.002+11:00

In a previous post from last year, I wrote about our gorgeous new chook which we think is an Araucana. Her eggs are a fabulous blue colour and created much interest (and surprise!) when she finally started to lay. It was interesting to compare our regular eggs (bantam eggs and from eggs from our Isa Brown chook) to our Araucan's. The kids talked about size, shape, texture and of course its amazing colour.

It was a great learning opportunity for the kids and me. We discussed their understanding of what an egg is and why and how they are laid. There were many questions including what would it be like inside.

We also explored possible names for the colour of these beautiful eggs.

How would you describe the colour of these eggs?

The chook farmers for the week write the birthdate of each egg so that we can keep track of when they were laid.
They are used in our cooking program in Level 1 and 2.

Happy Holidays!!!

2010-12-26T18:48:00.000+11:00

Thanks heavens for the great rainfall we have had this year. Although some of our wonderful families have become part of the Garden Angel Watering Team for the holidays, I think they might just be visiting our school to enjoy a play in our gardens rather than having to water our plants. Thankyou once again to these families who are caring for our gardens through our long Summer holiday.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Sunflower Challenge

2010-12-14T23:22:00.001+11:00

Last year we grew some enormous and very beautiful sunflowers. This year we are particpating in the Yates Sunflower Challenge. We have planted many sunflower seeds around our school gardens, some of which are donated from Yates as part of the challenge to grow the biggest sunflowers.
We also had save some of our seeds from our sunflowers which we also planted.
As we had so many seeds, Level 1 and 2 students designed and created their own packet to contain some seeds to take home to plant. We talked about what information might need to be on their packet and what we would need to consider when planting our seeds.

Getting ready for Summer.

2010-12-14T23:08:00.000+11:00

Today in the garden, we added sugar cane mulch in preparation for a hot Summer. We are hoping that our mulch will retain some moisture and slow down the weeds while we are on holidays.
Some of our school families have offered to water our plants during the holiday break. This is great news! Last year we returned to an amazing sight with our Mandala Vegetable Garden filled to the brim with gorgeous produce.
This year we have not planted quite as much (due to my long holiday in 3rd term!) but our orchard and other gardens will need water...unless we continue to have the rain we have experienced recently. How amazing for us to come out of an extensive drought....something some of our students haven't experienced. We still harvest and utilize our rainwater collected in our many tanks and our students remain aware of our water usuage.

Yum......beetroot dip!!!!

2010-12-14T22:39:00.002+11:00

Yesterday our level 3 students used our harvested beetroots to make enough yummy beetroot dip for all of our students in the school to taste.
We had been working in our Mandala Vegetable Garden doing some planting and mulching and noticed that our beetroots were ready. As we are about to go on our long Summer holiday, we thought that we had better harvest and use these delicious veggies.
Everyone in the class took part in the preparation of the dip and all had a taste...most loving it and wanting the recipe to try at home.
All commented on the fabulous colour which contrasted beautifully with the mint garnish also from our garden.
Cooking and sharing food using produce from our gardens is great fun while showing how delicious fresh food can be.

Delicious!!!

More vistors to our school.....

2010-12-14T22:09:00.002+11:00

Today one of our ex students shared her passion about her two interesting pets, Gonza, the turtle and Gregory, the very amazing Eastern Bearded Dragon.
Aleisha, now a year 9 student, spent part of today showing my students these amazing animals, answering many excellent questions about them and their care and sharing interesting facts about them.
In some of today's classes, students took the time to draw them. The results were wonderful as they had a chance to really examine what these creatures looked like, patterns, textures, shape, form etc.
Thankyou to Aleisha for her time and interest....we loved the experience!

There's nothing like hands-on observation with real life creatures to foster a love of living things.....

Discovering pigment and dyes from nature.

2010-10-17T18:01:00.005+11:00

Students from Level 1 to 4 had fun in Art exploring the amazing range of pigments which is in many different materials found growing in our gardens. It gave us a great opportunity to think about where fabrics got their colour, what is a dye and where dyes originated from.

We looked at the many possible sources in our school yard and we went on a walk to collect things we thought had possibilities. Students collected flowers, stems, leaves, bark, fruit and vegetables and proceded to extract pigment by pounding, cutting, crushing, mixing with hot water (with much care) and either transfered the pigments onto their fabric sample or they created a dye bath in which to dye their fabric.

This was very noisy (Sorry Alan ...our principal's office is next to the Art Studio) but the students were able to really explore how dyes might have been made before synthetic dyes took over (only about 150 years ago).

This week we will discuss how successful they were, issues of being colour fast and achieving intensity of colour.

Here are some of their experiments.

Beetroots from our veggie patch were most successful!! We used the leaves as well as the root.

Yay for Spring!

2010-09-28T14:23:00.003+10:00

Learning about seasonal change is meaningful and authentic when you have a great school garden to observe, work and play in. I am looking forward to returning to our school gardens after a ten week absence to see what has happened and whether our thousands of bulbs have transformed our gardens.
I have taken Long Service Leave and have been on a wonderful holiday exploring Far North Queensland. There I experienced the diverse flora and fauna species particular to that region of our incredible country.
I hope to share some of my experiences with my students and hopefully share with them the importance of actively preserving our biodiverstiy for future generations to enjoy and benefit from.

.............some pictures to follow soon....

Have you heard of Nature Deficit Disorder?

2010-07-14T15:52:00.003+10:00

Worth thinking about......

Hooray for Diffendoofer day!

2010-07-02T22:18:00.001+10:00

Before I sign off and leave this term's blogging to Michelle, I have to tell you about this gorgeous book called "Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!" This book was conceived by Dr Seuss who unfortunately died before he completed it.
His idea of writing about celebrating individuality and creative thinking was taken up by children's poet, Jack Prelutsky and illustrator, Lane Smith, who finished what Ted had started.

This story is about an amazing school in which the students are taught amazing things like yelling and smelling, laughing and yelling, "frogs to dance and pigs to put on underpants"...and much more!. Most of all, the teachers teach the kids how to think! The very worried principal, Mr Lowe announces that the students must take a test which is taken by all schools (sounds very much like Naplan!!) "to see who's learning such and such-to see which school's the best"....and if they don't do well, the school will have to close and they would have to go to dreary Flobbertown.
I won't spoil the ending by telling what happens in case you read it!

I loved reading this to my Level 3 students and we enjoyed comparing our school to the amazing Diffendoofer School. I also loved how our kids recognised that we teach our students how to think! Let's hope the Naplan test results reflect the creative thinking and individuality that our school encourages.

http://www.seussville.com//titles/diffendoofer/guide.html

What an inventive group of kids!

2010-06-24T22:58:00.003+10:00

Our students love to use natural materials in our gardens to create cubbies, pathways, miniworlds, racetracks, etc. One day, when I was on yard duty, I noticed this group of very industrious kids working collaboratively to design and construct an obstacle course for our chooks.

These old tree rounds and others find themselves all around the school and they are used for many different purposes.

Look at the effort they are putting in.

I think Storm liked her new obstacle course....... ;)

Float or sink??

2010-06-22T21:59:00.000+10:00

Level 3 students have been learning about transport in their classroom. Part of their inquiry was to design, construct and test a floating form of transport using materials collected from our schoolgrounds. They were most successful at the testing part of the process.

Isn't learning fun when you can use real situations and materials and work with a team to solve a problem.

Well done Level 3 students and teachers!

Bulbs, bulbs and more bulbs..........

2010-06-22T21:41:00.001+10:00

Now I really cannot wait until Spring........ Krystal and Ethan arrived with MORE bulbs today!! Serious bulb planting took place today in our gardens. Now we will enjoy flowers popping up in our Peace garden, Discovery garden, Flower garden, along our fenceline with more in our recycled (scrounged) boxes we had planted last year.We should have a tapestry of incredible colours amongst our plants when they flower.

More planting tomorrow........

Here our Level 1 and 2 students are adding bulbs to last year's box plantings. You can see that some of last year's bulbs are already coming up.

Our level 1 and 2 students made a colourful thank you letter/poster to show our appreciation for these gifts.

The kids took such care with drawing and cutting out their tiny flower pictures (copied from the bulb packets), showing great respect for the gift and the giver.
...I think I overdid it with the "beautifuls"...oops....

Ducks are on the pond.........

2010-06-22T21:17:00.001+10:00

On Monday we had a surprise visit from two ducks who decided they would stay a while in our Frog Habitat pond. Level 3 students watched quietly while these two visitors enjoyed a chilly morning swim in our pond. It's great to see our Frog Habitat being enjoyed by a variety of creatures........no frogs yet though ;(
Some students were fascinated with the ripples on the surface of the pond....makes you wonder if some kids ( and adults) don't spend time just quietly observing some of the amazing little wonders of nature without the noise and rush of normal everyday life.

Lots to look forward to in a garden!

2010-06-20T14:32:00.005+10:00

The consideration for many of our plantings in our garden have been to select drought tolerant and native plants. We also try to select plants with a few purposes. Fruit/shade trees, plants which smell great and we can also eat, bamboo that we can use for staking our plants, bush tucker plants and flowering plants for learning and bringing birds into the garden, plants that slow the movement of water across our garden to prevent flooded areas in our garden etc.

Two of our latest plant purchases are not natives but are trees which will particularly indicate seasonal change. One is a weeping cherry, another is a beautiful maple. Both have been planted in our Discovery Garden along with two gorgeous native flowering gums which will be a "food bar" to our bird population and will provide shade in this area too.

Every season will show changes in these wonderful trees which were purchased with prize money from last year's Victorian State Schools Garden Awards competition, one we enjoy entering each year.

Thanks to my long suffering husband Steve, who collected them and planted them with me this weekend.... what a great supporter of our school!

Look out for photos soon

Thanks to Krystal and Ethan..... Can't wait for Spring......

2010-06-19T11:43:00.003+10:00

What a lovely surprise this week! Two of our students arrived proudly at my door bearing gifts of hundreds of bulbs for our garden. We had been lucky to be given some last year and we had planted them in our recycled (read "scrounged") wooden boxes which the kids had arranged in a maze like design on a plain asphalt area.We have noticed that these bulbs have already begun to pop out their little heads promising us a fabulous display again when Spring comes. We have used this planting for many lessons ......and it looked great too.

The bulbs that arrived this week totally changed what I had planned. We looked at what they were, how they developed into wonderful flowers, what they looked like (many said onions), their requirements and how we will use them.

We looked at sizes, grouping them from smallest to biggest in groups of four or five kids.The kids then decided how to group them.

The following pictures show how these inventive kids did it.......( I reckon they learnt a lot more about growing bulbs in the process...I was impressed and they found out the info themselves!)

Grouping ideas included: Smallest to biggest, longest shoot, time they took to grow, where they grow best, when they should be grown, colour groups, size of bulb, size of flower etc.

We will put these in this week...weather permitting! :)

It's why we do what we do.......

2010-06-15T21:40:00.005+10:00

“Without continuous hands-on experience, it is impossible for children to acquire a deep intuitive understanding of the natural world that is the foundation of sustainable development. ….A critical aspect of the present-day crisis in education is that children are becoming separated from daily experience of the natural world, especially in larger cities.”

Natural Learning, Creating Environments for Rediscovering Nature’s Way of Teaching, Robin C. Moore and Herb H. Wong

Tamsin loves the Earth!

2010-06-09T21:19:00.000+10:00

Tamsin in Level 2 brought this to school today. She had made it at home in response to an earlier lesson about how we can make a difference to the health of our planet. I think she will!!!!

What does it take to be an insect?

2010-06-09T21:02:00.003+10:00

Level 1 and 2 have been looking at arthropods and today we focussed on insects and their features. We identified three body parts, three pairs of legs and antennae as the basic features of an insect. In pairs, students designed their own insect, considering how it eats, moves, finds its food, avoids being eaten etc.

There was much discussion about how they would design their insect. The students looked at a variety of creatures under our fabulous stereo microscopes to get more inspiration.

This is our Sustainable Futures Room......lots of interesting things to explore and inspire.

Cream is our model in the Art Studio....

2010-06-08T21:35:00.003+10:00

In a previous post, I wrote about how we took advantage of having our dear little Cream (of the pair Cookies and Cream), our white silky bantam visit the Art Studio. Students enjoyed being able to develop their observation skills by having her close while drawing her.

Here are some charcoal sketches from that day from our Level 3 artists.

I know it's not Autumn but......

2010-06-08T19:50:00.001+10:00

I know...it's not Autumn...it's winter....

While the majority of our plantings are native, we do have some deciduous trees in our gorgeous gardens. They were planted decades ago and they are wonderful to show seasonal change, colour and contrast.

We collect the leaves to add to our compost bins in layers but we couldn't resist a bit of fun once the job was done!

I wondered why a group of students were not focussed on my "wonderful" lesson about Bugs yesterday...(well I thought it was.) It wasn't until one said "Hey look at that cool nest!" that we all had to stop and head over to the window to wonder what had made this amazing nest clothed in leaves. Is it a home for a bird family? Or maybe a dear little possum has taken up residence....

Printing in Art.....

2010-06-08T19:33:00.002+10:00

It is always fabulous seeing what our little artists come up with when they are exploring ways to make art works. Today we were print making and I love the fact that my job of Art teacher and Sustainable Futures teacher overlaps in many ways. The theme chosen by many of our artists monoprinting today involved the gardens, creatures and the planet. (without suggestion from me.... :) )

Here are a few prints.....not too many as it is a bit busy in an artroom in which every child is in charge of a roller, black ink and is moving around to store their prints and collect more paper for the next print...am I crazy??? It was fun though....

We will work more on these next week taking these artworks further by adding colour with water colour paints.

This was a bit blurry as he was keen to get onto the next one!

Great fun and learning in the Bush Tucker Garden.

2010-06-02T19:58:00.002+10:00

Another great day in the garden! Level 4 students got stuck into working in the Bush Tucker Garden, showing just what is achievable when working as a team. Everyone settled into various tasks beginning with some planting. We had been given some native plants from a very generous parent, Jacqui's and Alicia's mum, Jeanette who is a great supporter of our school gardens. We grew them on to larger plants and today it was perfect timing to put them in.

Lots of other work included weeding, raking, sweeping and general tidying. One group decided that we could borrow (?) some rocks from our Discovery Garden to put around as a mulch near the bird bath and to make the pathway clearer. Everyone got on board and the result was fabulous.

Lessons in Sustainable Futures often revolve around what is happening our gardens and today with our focus on the Bush Tucker Garden our discussions included how our indigenous Aborigines cared for their environment when gathering their food. One plant which is fruiting at the moment is the Midyim Berry (Austromyrtus Dulcis). We had a tasting of this delicious berry and I noticed that some students returned at recess to have another taste.

One of our teachers, Joyanne loves Midyim Berries so we let her have a taste before they disappeared....

She described the taste as an explosion of flavour!

Thanks Archie's Dad!

2010-06-01T20:14:00.002+10:00

We have wonderful parents at our school who help us in a many ways. Tonight after school, Archie's dad, Dan put up some recycled chalkboards in our undercover area. We had salvaged some old chalkboards from a previous renovation and coupled with some great frames from Reverse Art Truck (painted with art studio paints), we now have some incredibly cheap outdoor drawing, brainstorming, notice, graffiti boards. Our undercover quiet area was one of our first areas to redesign. It was a concrete area which was cold and unwelcoming. We put in outdoor carpet, a stage, seating and tables for woodworking during exploring time. We have powerpoints for cooking, power tools, music, lighting etc. Kids use this area for quiet (and not so quiet) games and have invented all kinds of play activities suitable for this area. It is used in the hot weather and the cold. Now it has our gorgoeus new chalkboards!!
Thanks again to Dan and Shandelle (Archie's mum) who made and positioned these chalkboards. They look great!

In true "Ruth style" these have not been positioned in a predicatable way.....not sure if the boss approves.... ;)

Fantastic effort by Level 4 gardeners!

2010-06-01T19:36:00.006+10:00

Wow...it was pretty chilly this morning but we soon warmed up by working in our veggie gardens. Everyone was focussed on their chosen task and much was achieved.
Here are some of our workers this morning..... I am soooo proud of them!

Fun in the garden with Level 3

2010-05-31T21:40:00.004+10:00

Today Level 3 decided where they would work in the Vegetable Gardens and what tasks they would undertake.

This group of students are enthusiastic workers in our garden and they worked very well on a variety of tasks.

A popular task was to dig up the remainder of our Jerusalem Artichokes. I say "remainder" but we obviously never harvest them all as we always have sneaky ones remaining which grow back each year. A great offshoot of this was that the kids dug over and weeded an area making it almost ready for more planting. It is amazing how motivated they were when rewarded with finding these unusual vegetables.

Today we worked in both the Mandala Garden and the old vegetable patch, mulching, planting, applying compost, installing snail traps, adding seasol and general weeding. It was such a beautiful day and we achieved a lot. Looking forward to Level 4s tomorrow....if the weather is fine.

Living In Balance with Nature

2010-05-26T22:21:00.001+10:00

Level 1 and 2 students brainstormed how we can live so that we don't upset the balance of our environment. Reading Uno's Garden really highlighted how important it is that we consider our environment in all we do. The all contributed to this poster which is in our corridor and a great reminder to everyone to live sustainably.

It always impresses me as to the level of understanding these kids have of how we can make a difference.

Now a visit from another special creature....

2010-05-26T21:31:00.002+10:00

Yesterday some very excited level 4 students arrived at the door of our Art Studio with a gorgeous little Praying Mantis. They were keen to observe it for a while before returning it to the garden so needed a container. We talked about what we already knew about these little creatures and what we might need to find out if we were keeping it for a little while. We commented on its huge body and one student said that he thought it was a female due to some spots on its legs...very observant. This morning when they arrived at school again I was greeted by some very excited but worried students. "Part of her body has come off!" said one. What we saw was a strange oval mass which was stuck onto the lid of the container.

It became clear to the kids that this was actually a group of eggs which our mantis laid through the night. The eggs were covered in a coating to protect them until they hatch. How exciting!!!! She now has a new large container with leaves and a nice juicy cricket which our Green Tree Frogs didn't mind sharing. The kids can find out more about caring for their mantis tomorrow.

Final posting for Spore Project...

2010-05-19T21:37:00.007+10:00

With lovely Autumn (but chilly) weather this week, we finally headed outside to position our 450 paper bag mushrooms on our grassy knoll in our Discovery Garden. We thought they looked fabulous and enjoyed being part of the Spore Project. It led onto some amazing learning opportunities for our students who are still discovering a very diverse range of fungi in our school yard.

These tiny mushrroms were created by our Level 1 and 2 students. They used Paper Clay, a very interesting modelling material, using skills gained from their clay mushies in a previous modelling session.

Hopefully our images will go up on the Spore Projects site soon...check it out!!

Poor little Cream (our white Silky)

2010-05-17T20:28:00.002+10:00

This morning after the weekend we noticed our little Silky, now named Cream (Cookies is the other Silky...) was looking pretty bedraggled and sorry for herself. Her feathers which are not waterproof like other hens were very wet and she looked a bit sad. While the students cleaned out the shed, I took her into the Art Studio and tried to clean her up and dry her. She loved being in by the heater as it was a really chilly morning this morning.

As she had settled well, I took this opportunity for the students to use her visit as inspiration for some great drawing. It certainly helps to build up knowledge of your subject to have it in front of you as you work. The students described Cream using artist's language before they drew her, first using charcoal and then using a fine-line pen. It was great fun having her as part of our Art session and the results were fabulous.

Out of the mouths of babes....

2010-05-12T20:58:00.001+10:00

Today after reading Uno's Garden to Level 1 and 2, we talked about the balance between the environment and development. We played a game where the students took the parts of environmentalists, loggers, farmers and developers. Discussions about how to create the balance that was finally achieved in Uno's Garden included a comment by Zoe, one of our prep students. Zoe said "They (environmentalists, loggers, farmers etc.) should talk together about how to save habitats". Fantastic...wouldn't that be great.

Turning over a new leaf...

2010-05-12T19:56:00.001+10:00

Level 4 students considered what "turning over a new leaf" meant and in particular how we could apply it to how we care for our planet. Students hadn't heard this term before and discussions revolved around how it might mean starting again with a new and improved idea, making a change, trying harder with a new way etc. They wrote "turn over a new leaf" on one side with their ideas for themself and family as to what they could do to try harder for our planet. They had some great ideas and we hung them next to our tree in the corridor.....not sure if our cleaner is happy with all our hanging displays....sorry...

How exciting...a stick insect makes a visit.

2010-05-11T22:52:00.004+10:00

Today a very large stick insect visited our school. For some time now due to our planting and the respectful way our students play in the schoolground, our gardens have been a haven for a variety of creatures.
Today's visitor provided a great learning opportunity as we watched in awe as this magnificent insect settled into his/her temporary habitat while we could observe it. We watched as this insect swayed back and forth to imitate a branch or twig. We marvelled at the way its structure was identical to a twig and was so camoflaged that we had trouble finding it at times. We were concerned that we didn't know its choice of diet until we saw it munching away on a eucalyptus leaf in its enclosure. Luckily Tamsin, one of our Level 2 students had kept these fascinating insects as a pet and was able tell us lots of information about keeping stick insects. We felt confident that we were providing a safe environment for the stick insect for the time we will observe it. We have many questions still about these great insects so we are keen to research them further.

The Spore Project inspires us to make more artworks....

2010-05-11T21:35:00.007+10:00

Our wonderful local Kindergarten inspired us to participate in the Spore Project when they visited recently. Today was to be the day we installed our paper bag mushrooms however with rain predicted we decided to wait a day or two. However we did create some wonderful mushroom inspired art developing our needle felting skills to make some amazing felted mushrooms. Level 4 students created these 3D mushrooms and were very proud (as I was also) of their efforts.

Level 1 and 2 made the most gorgeous little clay mushrooms. They carefully modelled and manipulated the clay to include the cap, gills and stem complete with markings made by impressing or scratching into the clay.

Some level 3 students took one look at the wonderful efforts of our littlies and wanted to make one too! These are drying ready for firing.

I can't believe how fascinated the kids are about toadstools! My yard duty consists of tours around all the toadstool cities in our school yard with the students showing me what is growing today.

Uno's Garden....the importance of biodiversity...

2010-05-11T20:56:00.002+10:00

Today in Sustainable Futures I read Uno's Garden by Graeme Base. I have read this story to these children before (Level 3) and they really love it ( as I do too). One said "That's where it is! I was looking for that in the library..." I had to promise that it would be back next week!
The kids are really taking on what this story represents.While one said it wouldn't happen in real life, some commented on the loss of habitat for orangutans due to farming palm oil for produce purchased by unsuspecting consumers. I thought that this was amazing that they could make this link (and others) These students have become environmentally aware of how we can affect our planet just by being there...just like Uno!
They talked about how the sad tale turned around once people started thinking more about the environment.

One of my very environmentally aware little students, Ruby summed it up beautifully when she said "This story is saying that the environment is more important than buildings and that everything needs to be in balance." She is eight.......how fantastic that she and her fellow students can unpack this story to explore what the author is saying.

Our chickens come out to play!

2010-05-05T20:54:00.003+10:00

How exciting....It was time today to let our little silkys out in the yard to play. We had kept them in the shed to settle them in for a few days but today was the day for them to face the big world. Level 4 students gave their shed a great clean up....lots of fun, water (from our tank!) and brooms and shovels and ....ta da... a clean shed and lovely chook pooh for our veggie patch.
Here are some images:

Spore Project

2010-05-05T19:18:00.010+10:00

As I have mentioned in previous posts, our students are participating in the Spore Project which was started by artist Doug Rhodehamel http://dougrhodehamel.wordpress.com/category/z2-spore/ and celebrates creativity and making art from everyday materials. People from all around the world are participating. We have made hundreds of paper bag mushrooms which we will place in our garden next week.

While the making of these was fun, it gave us the opportunity for our students to consider the Fungus Kingdom and the positive role fungi has in our environment. Students learnt about how fungus helps with decomposition, turning dead things into rich nutrients for our soil.

After going on a fungus hunt in our school gardens we tuned in our eyes to the amazing world of mushrooms, toadstools, moulds, puffballs etc. Students found the tiniest cities of toadstools, truly ugly looking puffballs, bright yellow fungus growing out of the side of a tree and many, many more amazing examples of these interesting organisms.

Here are some fungi we found on our hunt.

Pumpkin Soup......yum!

2010-05-04T20:42:00.004+10:00

During our Exploring Time sessions with our Level 1 and 2 students, cooking is always offered as a learning experience for our students. Often produce from our gardens and chickens is used in the vast range of recipes our students make. Fortunately for us we have an amazing band of volunteer parents and grandparents who support us in many ways. Today our pumpkins were used to make a delicious soup and some of our Blackburn English Language Centre students were part of the cooking team. What a great way to make, share and enjoy fresh healthy food while understanding where food comes from! This is what authentic learning is all about....

Beautiful new additions to our chooks!

2010-05-03T17:19:00.006+10:00

Wow! What a wonderful day.....gorgeous Autumn weather with a chilly start turning into a warm afternoon. It was great weather for our gardeners today who prepared our soil and planted some spinach and lettuce into our Mandala Garden. More worm and grub treats were found for our chooks who had to contend with some very special newcomers today.
Our long-time supporters at Croydon Pets and Produce (whose shop is very near to our school) donated two beautiful silky bantams to our very excited and appreciative students. These unusual little girls have settled in well to our brood...as we anticipated and have caused much excitement and intrigue (well...they do have blue earlobes!). Tomorrow they will all "play" together in the yard but we kept them separated for most of today.
The new "girls" visited everyone in the school (poor things) with the last visit to the classroom of our chook farmers for this week, our Blackburn English Language Centre students. They had been busily writing about their experience with chickens from their birth country and were learning the process for caring for the school chooks as for many it was their first time. They proudly read out their writing and it was great to hear about their experiences. Writing and learning to write has much more meaning when it is part of someone's own experience. They showed that they are learning and understanding English very quickly as they were able to change from second person to the first person seamlessly. Well done kids! We are lucky to have this lovely school annexed to our school and to be able share their rich cultures, ideas, experiences and great personalities.

These gorgeous little silky bantams are awaiting new names (the students are thinking up some goodies).

Thank you so much Croydon Pets and Produce for your very kind donation.We love them!

http://www.croydonpetsandproduce.com.au/

Our last watermelons.....sniff...

2010-04-28T22:50:00.006+10:00

Today we shared our last watermelons with the whole school. The general verdict was "delicious", "juicy", "scrumptious", "yummy", "the best", "awsome" etc. etc.
We decided to save the seeds in order to plant them next Spring to see if we can repeat our success this year. We are aware that this will be an experiment as we don't know if these seeds will be true to its parent plant.
Our younger students have a fabulous concept of how the life cycle is continuous and they could explain planting, germinating, flowering, pollination, fruiting and then ....eating....and then it starts all over again!
We have saved seeds before from parsley, lettuce, rocket, broad beans, sunflowers etc. and hope to become more self sufficient in the future....another great way to become more sustainable.

Visitors to our school

2010-04-28T21:16:00.009+10:00

Today we welcomed our local kindergarten students ( http://www.playbasedlearning.com.au/ ) to our school as part of our transition program. They brought with them many mini artworks which they placed in our Sensory Garden. As participants in an international arts inititiative called the Spore Project, the kindergarten students had constructed many beautiful mushrooms from paper bags. People from all around the world have constructed thousands of unique mushrooms from paper bags.

The SPORE Project was created by artist Doug Rhodehamel and is a worldwide effort developed to promote awareness for the support for art education and creativity in day-to-day life.

http://dougrhodehamel.wordpress.com/category/z2-spore/

We may be a little late joining the project, but we have been inspired by our kindergarten friends to participate. Stay posted to see our mushrooms. It will also be a great opportunity for our students to study how mushrooms grow and what a spore is.

What is a habitat?

2010-04-21T19:53:00.014+10:00

Level 1 and 2 students today created a habitat in which a Garden Skink would survive. Many of our kids had talked about these gorgeous little creatures with some of them knowing about their ability to drop their tail when in danger. We talked about what kind of habitat would be best for a skink. Many knew about them being cold blooded and the way they bask on a rock in the sun to warm up. It was great to hear their conversations about food sources and shelter from weather and preditors as they were building. They loved this experience and enjoyed earning a little paper skink to pop into their lizard houses when their habitats passed the quality habitat test.

Disaster....then good news!!

2010-04-19T20:09:00.006+10:00

What a disaster...our gorgeous black chook, Skittles was taken by a fox last Thursday. Many stories are circulating the playground about a fox beeing seen in the daytime. It is a reminder about our responsibility as Chook Farmers to make sure that any habitats we provide are safe as well as providing the necessities such as food and water.
We reflected again today in our Sustainable Futures lesson about habitats and what constitutes a healthy habitat. We talked about what happens if something is taken away from a habitat or is introduced to a habitat.
Level 3 students task today was to imagine that they have to create a place to keep an animal for a year. The animal will be in there without them or anyone else being able to be in contact with it. In their journals they drew and wrote about an ideal habitat for the animal they chose while being mindful of the necessary components of a habitat: food source, water, shelter from weather and preditors, a place to breed.
It was interesting when sharing our designed habitats at the end of the lesson, to discover how everything must be in balance in order for our "creature" to survive........a great opportunity to link to the situation with our attacked chook and our quest to attract frogs to our Frog Habitat.

This morning Leroy's grandpa arrived with two gorgeous chooks, one brown and one grey. Thankyou..... such great timing!

The grey one is quite unusual and we still haven't found out the breed. She has beautiful soft grey feathers and no comb or wattles. Can anyone tell us what she is?

Autumn in our school garden

2010-04-14T21:38:00.007+10:00

Today we took advantage of the beautiful autumn weather with Level 4 harvesting our massive pumpkins and the rest of our watermelons. Our Garden Guardian lunch time club had lots of fun finding the last of our potatoes and digging over our pumpkin patch ready for more planting. Fotunately for our chook, many grubs were found in the process and delivered to her for a special treat!

Bottled water or tap water?

2010-03-30T11:52:00.005+11:00

Make up your own mind about whether drinking bottled water is worth it...for your pocket or for the environment.
Check this out...

What is Earth Hour?

2010-03-25T17:18:00.002+11:00

Watch this video of what happened last year during Earth Hour. What started as an Australian idea a few years ago, has now gone global. It is a great way to show your support to address issues of climate change. Led by our student eco-captains, our school is participating in Earth Hour by turning off all our electrical appliances on Friday for one hour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FclcMfzjwug

Mulching our Bush Tucker Garden

2010-03-22T21:43:00.003+11:00

Today Level 3 students used leaf litter from our eucalypt trees to mulch our newly weeded Bush Tucker Garden.

Working Bee

2010-03-21T19:26:00.002+11:00

We had a very successful working bee today with many families offering their time to maintain our many gardens. Jobs included weeding, sweeping, whipper snippering, raking, trimming back and digging over our old veggie patch. In our Peace Garden our straw baled rendered seat has been repaired as has some of our playground equipment. The kids worked very hard also and the result is stunning.
This week in Sustainable Futures, our students will mulch our freshly weeded gardens and prepare our Mandala Garden for Autumn planting when they return after the holidays.
Thanks again to the families who attended today. It looks fabulous!

Earth Day March 27th

2010-03-15T22:48:00.000+11:00

Ride2school Day on Wednesday!

2010-03-15T21:41:00.003+11:00

On Wednesday many of our students will be riding or walking to school as part of a national ride to school day to encourage families to think about the benefits to both our environment and to our students. Today in Sustainable Futures, Level 3 students brainstormed the reasons for our school participating in this special day. Students then put up posters around the school to remind everyone to participate.

The students' ride or walk to school will cuminate in sharing breakfast and will involve parent helpers, our Environmental committee, staff and the Mayor of Maroondah who will also attend.

Our New Level 1 students learn to use their senses.

2010-03-15T21:14:00.005+11:00

One of our favourite gardens is our Sensory Garden. It has a lavender spiral which the children like to run their hands along as they enter. Our sensory inspired plantings included wonderful and unusual sented plants, different textural plants, some herbs for tasting, and tall, swishy bamboo which produces a lovely sound when the wind blows. A crunchy gravel path leads into the centre. Of course our sense of sight is engaged by the amazing flowers, leaf structures, butterflies, etc. etc.

Our Preps used their senses to find out about this garden last week during their Sustainable Futures lesson. Some children took home a hairy leaf from our "Lamb's Ear" plants to share the experience with their families.

What do you think of this crazy CWPS tomato with ears???

2010-03-15T21:10:00.007+11:00

We grew this tomato in our Mandala Vegetable Garden.

Isn't nature amazing!

We really should have thinned out our carrots from our Peter Rabbit garden....they still tasted yummy, fresh from the garden.

Harvesting is so much fun!

2010-03-15T20:02:00.013+11:00

Harvesting our produce is a favourite activity in our garden. Students often taste test while they work which is great fun too. We harvest tomatoes every day and don't even mind sharing some with our bird friends who are very prolific in our gardens. Our level 4 students have made some amazing pizzas using tomatoes, basil, parsley, capsicum, chilli, onions and spring onions all from our gardens.
Check out this lot we harvested the other day.

Our Mandala Vegetable Garden now....

2010-03-10T22:18:00.002+11:00

In our Sustainable Futures lessons, our students recorded growth, changes, and things of interest in their journals.

We have harvested five watermelons and many more are growing.

Thank heavens for our Garden Angels, our wonderful families who watered the garden over our very hot summer. Look at it now.....

This is a favourite job in the garden. We use water from our tanks.

These wonderful giant sunflowers are in our Jack and the Beanstalk section of our garden. They have inspired our level 1 and 2 artists to produce amazing artworks.

Mandala Vegetable Garden

2010-03-10T19:37:00.002+11:00

Metal edging helped create the curves of our Mandala design.
Removing the grass....

The site of our new Mandala Garden in our orchard area.

What a great time we had in the garden today! At lunchtime each Wednesday a happy and enthusiastic band of students, our Garden Guardians are waiting for me to arrive to work in our Mandala Vegetable Garden. They put on their bright vests (identifying who is helping today) and their gloves and set to work. Jobs today included harvesting (and eating) tomatoes, weeding and setting up another worm farm. The kids are very excited about still having watermelons growing, counting another nine on top of the five we have already harvested. Some gardeners relocated some of our beautiful little ladybirds in one part of the garden to begin some serious pest control on the aphids feasting on our corn. I hope it works...it was their idea!

The Mandala Garden was started last year after some consulting and designing with our students and a small grant from Landcare to get it started. We also had help from Conservation Volunteers Australia, who sent a team to prepare the area for our garden beds. Hp donated a funky little computer to help us with our project. We used a metal edging product which alowed us to create wonderful curves in our garden.

Check out the shape from above on http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.793838,145.263856&z=19&t=h&nmd=20100107 and find our school area to see it before it was planted out. We are so excited about this garden and kids are in it (usually eating!) most of the time. We have based the garden on circles with each class taking reponsibility for their section. The Mandala garden has a Pizza Garden, a Dessert Garden, a Jack and the Beanstalk Garden, a Asian Garden, a Peter Rabbit Garden and an Aussie Barbeque Garden. Surrounding this area is our orchard with many different fruit trees planted. An olive tree is in the centre of our garden. Check out some of the pictures of the progress of our vegetable gardenfrom the start until now.

Environmental Leaders

2010-03-09T23:03:00.001+11:00

Great news! We have just appointed our new Environmental Leaders. These students are enthusiastic and keen to work and lead our students in the quest for a healthier planet. Our Energy leaders are Taylor, Serena and Matt. Our Waste leaders are Georgia, Nicholas and Jacqui. Moe, Cameron and Joanna are taking care of Water with Kiki, Lily and Jasmine as our Biodiversity leaders. Our school has achieved 5 stars as part of the Sustainable Schools initiative (AuSSi) and we constantly are challenging ourselves to do the best we can for our environment in all our processes at CWPS.We have created amazing gardens in which our students play and learn. We believe that our students benefit greatly from connecting with nature and their care and concern for the environment has developed from being involved in planning, making, maintaining and developing each garden.