Monday 8 December 2014

Enviro Kids Week 8 Term 4 2014

Kia Ora Whanau! This week was the last week for the Enviro Kids to meet for the year. We met on Thursday instead of Wednesday and worked on our gardens and recipes for most of the day.

First we harvested our potatoes. What a great crop we had! Some of the purple passion potatoes had grown quite big. There were also lots of little ones that taste sweet when you cook them. Everyone worked really hard and we were very glad that Bob came to help with his pitch fork! Thank you Bob!

 
 
We gave the leftover leaves to the worms.
 
 
 
 
Now these gardens are ready for next year's planting. Great job Enviro Kids!
 
Then we moved to the silverbeet gardens by Room 12. We got a surprise when we dug down deep - there were potatoes! They had grown from some that got left in the gardens by mistake.
 
 
 
Everyone helped and did their part, it was great team work!
Arkylez worked really hard with his one arm, good on you Arkylez!
 
 
There was lots and lots of silverbeet so we kept some for our fritters and decided to give some to Room 12 to share because they have been very good citizens helping their neighbours in Room 10 and 11.
 
 
 
And we wanted Room 6 to have some because they have been following our blog and giving us great comments.
 
 
Then it was off to the kitchen to scrub and cook our potatoes so they would be ready for lunch.
 
 
 
 
We picked some mint from our herb gardens to add to the flavour, yum!
 
While the potatoes were cooking, we made our strawberry smoothies with Mrs Hart.
 
 
 
 
 
Delicious! Everybody liked them!
 
Recipe
Frozen strawberries; bananas; apples cut into 1/8s, skin on; some milk; some yoghurt. Put everything in a blender. Whizz till smooth. Pour into a cup. Enjoy!
 
Next we helped to make the silverbeet fritters. Some people were good at grating the cheese and some were good at mixing.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Recipe
 Haloumi cheese; 2 cups silverbeet, chopped; 1 Tblespn mint, chopped; zest from 1 lemon; 2 eggs; 1/2 cup of plain flour.
Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Then place spoonfuls into a frypan that has melted butter in it. Turn over when they go golden brown. Take out of the pan when the other side is golden brown. Allow to cool slightly and then eat them!
 
Mrs Hart cooked the fritters in a frypan. Then it was time to eat!
 
 
 
What a scrumptious feast!
 
After that we had a break for lunch time play and then we dug up the strawberry plants so we could all take one or two home to put in our own garden. We are looking forward to having ripe red strawberries for Christmas! Yum! Yum! Yum!
 



 
Great work Enviro Kids you have taken good care of our SPS environment!
Thank you to Mrs Hart and Mrs Hanline for leading our Enviro Kids this year!
Merry Christmas and Happy holidays to All!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Enviro Kids Week 7 Term 4 2014

Kia Ora Whanau!

The Enviro Kids have been very busy taking care of our strawberry patches!

This week we watered them to make sure we get juicy strawberries and we weeded the patch to make sure that they get lots of nutrients.
 
 
 
 
We are continuing to harvest our fruit and save them in the staff room freezer all ready for those fabulously delicious smoothies!

Happy gardening Everyone!

Wednesday 19 November 2014

Enviro Kids Week 6 Term 4 2014

Kia Ora Whanau!

What a great week for our Enviro Kids!

This week we checked on all the plants we are growing.

We noticed that our silverbeet is growing and sprouting lots of leaves that we will be able to harvest in the next couple of weeks. We love growing silverbeet because it gives us so much to share!

 
And we are very proud of our potatoe plants! Wow they have grown into monster plants! We are looking forward to harvesting them and making our famous potatoe wedges!
 
 
 
And then there are the strawberries! What a fabulous crop we are growing!
 
 
 
 
Happy gardening Everyone!
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday 11 November 2014

Enviro Kids Week 5 Term 4 2014

Kia Ora Whanau!

This week has been a busy one, once again for our Enviro Kids.

We checked out our strawberry patch and are harvesting the ripe red ones daily. These we are putting in the staff room freezer until we have enough to make a smoothie for the whole group.

 
We also worked over the soil in the garden by the front door and took out the large parsley plant that had gone to seed.
Then we soaked this garden using the hose because we wanted it to be really ready for the new herb plants that Joseph brought from his home garden. Thank you Joseph and Esther for providing the plants with good healthy roots so we can put them in our garden!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
We checked on our mint and it is growing so well that it has put out runners along the soil! We think we might put some in our smoothies too.
 
 
Happy gardening Everyone!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Enviro Kids Week 4 Term 4 2014

Kia Ora Whanau!

We have used our time this week to check up on how our potatoes and mint are growing.

As you can see, the potatoes are doing extremely well!

 
The mint is coming on too!
 
 
We also did some research to find out which herbs would be best to put in our other garden by the office door. We looked at several sites but the one we found most helpful was www.yates.co.nz.
It had some very good advice about growing and planting herbs. We decided that our garden is fairly dry with part shade and part sun and they told us that thyme, sage, oregano and marjoram would be the best herbs to plant here.
We will get some next week, plant them and see what happens.
 
One of our Enviro Kids, Joseph, has come up with an idea for another activity we could do that would help the environment and our community. He has suggested that we adopt a park area and spend some time doing clean ups of rubbish in that area.
We would like your opinion on this idea. Please put what you think in our comments space.
Thank you and happy gardening!
 
 
 

Thursday 30 October 2014

Enviro Kids Term 4 Week 3 2014

Kia Ora Whanau!

This week we have been harvesting our cauliflowers. We grew them in the gardens by the front door of our office and we have learned that these gardens are not very good for these plants.

We have thought a lot about this and our conclusions are:
- these gardens do not get enough sun
- these gardens do not get enough rain
- these gardens do not have enough room for large plants.

Luckily there were just enough of the cauliflowers for us to share and take home to our whanau.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Well done Enviro Kids, you are using your gardening skills and your thinking skills to make the plants grow so we can share them!
Happy gardening Everyone!