Penguin Nesting Boxes - The final steps

We completed our Penguin Nesting Box project over the last 2 weeks by decorating the boxes and presenting them to Lucy from the West Coast Penguin Trust.

Last week we planned our design for painting the boxes. 

We then painted the boxes using only 5 colours, red, yellow, blue, white and black. We were able to make any colour we needed from these 5 colours.

Lucy from the West Coast Penguin Trust presented each of us with a certificate of appreciation and we presented her with our nesting boxes!

Sensory gardens

Have you heard of a sensory garden? Sensory gardens can help people self regulate when they are feeling low, lacking energy, or high and over excited. We have focused on bring different elements in that appeal to different senses. Each group had to design part of the garden that appealed to our sense of: smell, taste, sound, texture or sight. 

One group is in charge of developing a garden to go around a boat that we are having restored to go in the garden. 

First we measured the area the garden is going in. Then each group drew a scale map. We then had to research what would be appropriate to have in the garden. As part of our research we went on a virtual tour of a sensory garden in Christchurch. One of our parents walked around the garden with a phone camera talking to us about what was there. We also got to talk to some of the children using the garden.

We found that lots of plants overlapped, that is they fitted with texture and smell, or colour.  We discovered that different levels are important in a sensory garden.  We saw lots of great ways to introduce different textures with fences, ropes and path surfaces. Lots of people thought water was a good idea in a sensory garden.

After we put all our group's ideas on a shared slide we started making a three dimensional model of our garden. We have shared these with our principal and we need to share it woth our school board as well.

Our next step will be to have some plans drawn up so we can gather our materials, raise some funds and start our garden.

Enviroschools afternoon- Yooshi Game

Yoshi is the story of a turtle who facces obstacles in his journey through the sea. Our leaders Zoe and Isla changed a few details and Yoshi became a blue penguin, or Korora. The leaders set up an obstacle course for students to navigate blindfolded. They had a sighted partner to tell them what to do but they were only allowed to use their voice. 

The obstacles included chairs, tables and ropes. Some of the obstacles were a bit tricky. I guess that is true too for the korora, finding your way back to the beach and navigating the sandhills at dawn and dusk must be a challenge. 

The senior girls show off their skills

                                           The leaders tricked us by throwing soft balls to                                               distract us.

Hoops proved a challenge.

Does your school have Enviroschools activities  run by your school leaders?

Habitat Trip

On Thursday 16th November, Rūma Kereru and Rūma Piwakwaka had a field trip to Hokitika beach to learn about Kororā Little Blue Penguin and to Wadeson Island to learn about whitebait habitats.

We all gathered on the beach at the northern end of Hokitika where we met Lucy from the West Coast Penguin Trust. 45 students and 13 adults made a very large group of people!

Our first job as penguin rangers was to look for foot prints on the beach and identify who they belonged to. Tasman really enjoyed looking for tracks. Bede liked learning about the different types of prints and being in the sun.

Next we identified some Kororā prints. 

They always go in a pretty straight line from the dunes to the sea.

We made some plaster casts of the footprints we found. For lots of us this was our favourite thing.

After we had had morning tea, we went to Wadeson Island and learnt about whitebait and restoring their habitat with Petra from Westland Milk Products. There are now lots of breeding sites for the whitebait at Wadeson Island.

This is a video Mrs Locky took at low tide a week before our visit. Whitebait are a bit scared by noise and movement so they were difficult to spot on our trip but they are there!

Rūma Kereru building Kororā nesting boxes

On Friday 10th November we all had a go at building nesting boxes. Mrs. Locky and her daughter Grace had cut the wood and predrilled and labeled all the holes to make it easier for students to assemble.

It was like a 3D puzzle and was pretty hard to put together. 

Everyone worked hard as a team listening to each other's ideas and taking turns. 

Altogether we made 6 nesting boxes for the West Coast Penguin Trust. Lucy from the WCPT was there to help and she told us that the nesting boxes protect the eggs, nesting parents and the hatched chicks. She had a photo of a chick hanging out in a nesting box last week while its' parents were out at sea feeding.

Web of Life

On Friday we had some games and activities teaching us about our Kororā West Coast Little Blue Penguins and what impacts on them.

We were each given a card with an animal or place on it. Starting with the Kororā, who held a ball of string, we had to find someone or something that impacted on us. We then held onto the string and threw the ball of string to that person and we created a web. 

Here is an example of the web: Kororā 🠞fish🠞 seal 🠞wave🠞sand🠞sedge pingao 🠞banded dotterel

When everyone had a turn, one person pulled on the string and we could all feel it demonstrating how everything is connected by the web.

Blue Penguin Game

The students had to cross the land and sea to make it safely back with a bean bag. The winning team was the group who had the most bean bags. We had two predators whe represented dogs and humans.