Cauliflowers and new vision map

Our first cauliflowers have shown their heads!  Check out the colours!

We also installed our new vision map in the office foyer!!

Photos from the bronze day

Receiving our Bronze Award

NGĀ MIHI KIA WHĀNAU Ō MATAIRANGI!  KIA PAI ŌU KOUTOU MAHI!  KIA PAI ŌU AKO ME TE WHANAUNGATANGA, ME TE MAHITAKI ME TE KAITIAKITANGA!

THE BRONZE REFLECTION TEAM 2016!

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE CLYDE QUAY SCHOOL WHANAU!  WELL DONE FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK!  WELL DONE FOR ALL YOUR LEARNING AND COMMUNITY MINDEDNESS, YOUR EFFORTS AND YOUR CARETAKING OF OUR SCHOOL!

WE ARE NOW A BRONZE ENVIROSCHOOL AND TODAY WE RECEIVED OUR AWARD!

Today Clyde Quay School was recognised in a formal assembly as being a Bronze Enviroschool.  We were joined and supported by Moira and the Mt Cook School Green Team, Wellington City Councillor Iona Pannet and Arihia Latham our Enviroschools Facilitator.  

Our Performance Kapahaka group were there to welcome our visitors, the Green Team took them on a tour of the school and we celebrated our time with Tea and Tapenade in the staffroom.  Our whole school then joined us for the Bronze assembly to receive the Bronze Award - a medal that recognises our efforts and achievements to be a sustainable school.  

Our Bronze Enviroschool status means that this descriptive paragraph applies to our school:
We have started work on getting to know our environment better and are creating a whole school vision (You can see our vision map outside Whaea's office - we will be update this over the next few weeks)
Students at our school are exploring options and finding ways to take action for the environment.  (Students identified that our inquiries are one of the main ways that this is celebrated throughout the school)
We can already show some changes from what we have done.  (Many students collated evidence from the classes and Enviro projects and this will be on display on our blog)
There are some staff and students actively involved and we are letting everyone else in our school know about what has been going on. (Assemblies featured highly on this list of successes).
The people in our school and community know that we are an Enviroschool.  (And more member of the public will know once our Enviroschools sign goes up, after the "poisonous" tree is removed from out the front of the office!  Keep your eyes peeled!)
We are all thinking about the Guiding Principles of being an Enviroschool and these principles of sustainability are reflected in planning and action, and we can see how they would look across the following four key areas of school life.  We are guided by the principles of Sustainable Communities, Empowered Students, Valuing of Maori Perspectives, Respect for Diversity of people and culture and Learning for Sustainability.

This slide show highlights our top 5 projects, but it was pretty hard to narrow it down to only 5!

After 3 years of planning....finally, the water tank gets actioned!

Rob's not camera shy, he's hard at work!

Soon we'll be able to rinse our compost buckets out.  This tank is behind Simu classroom and is right next to the worm farm.  Very convenient!

Junior enviro team is taking action!

The juniors have been working hard on Fridays! We have transferred some strawberry plants that were growing in the carpark into the tyres near Ngaio classroom. Bella noticed they needed some water!
Check out our leaf people we made as well...

Olives!

The Green Team has been cruising the streets of Mt Victoria over the last couple of Friday lunch times to harvest olives.  We soaked them in water which we refreshed daily for a week then filled and today put them in jars filled with brine (salty water).  Apparently they should be ready for eating soon after the holidays.  We'll let you know how our taste tests go!

Schoolgen

Power to the next generation 

We would like you to meet our Schoolgen team they were busy learning all about how to save our energy in our school. 

Keep up the good work team!

 Here is a video on 10 tips on saving energy around your home.

Term 2 2016.

"The Chosen Ones" (students who have volunteered to work alongside the Green Team, and take responsibility for leading the Schoolgen initiatives throughout the school) have spent the day working with Maggie Twaddle from Schoolgen.  They have discussed ideas and ways to remind CQS how to reduce our energy use.  There will be several ways that the team build on the successes of the Energy Audit crew from past years.

Ngaio shows how to set up Winter Warmers

Ngaio has a neat way of checking if the heat pump is actually on!!!!

This one has all the kids talking!  What a cool slogan!

When all else fails, there's always the threat!!!

Harakeke Considers the Environment

Some of our waste reducers from Rimu whanau planned an art activity for the new entrants. Here follows their final work, showing things that are good for the environment (images on the left) and things that are bad for the environment (images on the right). The photos show the presentation of the awards for "kia pai ō mātau mahi".

Growing seeds and making skate ramps

The CQS Green Team might have been terrible bloggers this year, but we have been incredibly busy.  Today some Karaka boys worked with Tom Culy (Mel's son) to modify skate ramps so they are easier to move.  They also gave them a new lick of paint.

The Greenhouse group planted seeds, so soon we'll have a whole lot of delicious winter vegetables seedlings to share with the community!

New year, new name, new exciting projects!

We have just had our third meeting for the year and are off to a great start.  After some intense discussion about the best possible name for the group we have rebranded ourselves as the green team.

We also had a look at some of the places at our school.  We're using that information now to work out which projects we want to attack.

Arihia from Enviroschools paid us a visit and we talked about what it means to be an Enviroschool. 

 Stay tuned for an update on which projects we decide to tackle, who will be doing which projects and our progress.

Our Vision Map - Since 2013