We need your moth pods!  The competition to collect as many moth pods as we can, has started!  There is a $5000 prize for the school or early childhood centre which can collect as many pods as they can.

This highly evasive plant is everywhere – strangling our trees, natives and plants and can even smother fences and buildings.  Once you start looking for it, you will see it everywhere.

Pick the pods and bring to school in bags to help us win.  You will be doing us and the environment a huge favour.  It’s best to wear gloves when handling the pods as they do have a sap inside which can sting your skin.

If you need bags, we have heaps at the office.

During our Enviro sessions this week, we experienced what it is like to be a scientist and it was FUN!  We used our observation skills, touch, and investigative skills to experience a variety of activities.

We began by being blindfolded and touching an object inside a box – trying to figure out what it was.  There was a huge toy weta, a prickly glove, a pot scrubber and even a moth pod!

We then played with some scientific “toys” which illustrated the three main physics principles at work: conservation of energy, conservation of momentum and friction.  The “toys” were Newton’s cradle, the splink, the rattleback and Jacob’s ladder.

Another activity we did was to use our observation skills to sort and categorise through a collection of random debris.  We used magnifying glasses and tweezers to put the debris into groups and then recorded our findings on a graph.  New Zealand has the highest amount of plastic eaten by birds in the world – not something to be proud of!  Two good things have happened recently which are helping to fix this problem – no longer can you get plastic straws and also milk bottles no longer have the plastic rims around them when opened.  The next step is to stop having stickers on fruit as these often end up in the environment  .

The Gardens School intermediates recently made headlines as they showcased their passion for innovation and sustainability at the EVolocity Launch Day event. EVolocity, a nationwide competition fostering electric vehicle (EV) innovation among youth, provided an exciting platform for these young minds to explore, innovate, and inspire.

About EVolocity: EVolocity is more than just a competition; it’s a movement driving the future of transportation towards sustainability. With a mission to encourage creativity and problem-solving skills, EVolocity invites intermediate and high school students across New Zealand to design, build, and race their own electric vehicles. The competition offers an engaging hands-on experience, empowering young minds to tackle real-world challenges in renewable energy and transportation.

The EVolocity competition aims to promote electric vehicle technology and sustainable transportation solutions while nurturing a new generation of innovators. Participants not only learn about the principles of electric vehicle design and engineering but also gain invaluable teamwork, communication, and project management skills.

Stay tuned for future posts on the progress of their go-karts! If you would like to be a sponcer, please contact Chris van Tonder

TGS has entered a competition to collect as many moth pods as we can.  There is a $500 prize which the school would use for resources.

Moth plants are a pest to our environment as they multiply very quickly and strangle everything in their path; including native plants, trees and even fences and buildings.

The pods form in summer and can contain up to 700 seeds which are parachute – like, so therefore spread far and wide, (up to 30kms) throughout our parks, gardens and bush.

This poster designed by Kahu student Chelsea explains the details about the competition.

This term in kāhu we have been extending our knowledge by learning and making our own digital art.

In the kāhu hapori we love expressing ourselves, our identity, hobbies, skills and many many more! The purpose of digital art is to teach not only students but also teachers different digital skills on multiple platforms and apps. With this digital art, it helped us get creative and show off some of our very creative skills when it comes to technology. Here are some forms of digital art we have made in kāhu this term.

In the Kāhu space, the first digital art project we worked on was flox art. Before creating the flox art we looked at examples of flox art from a popular flox artist Hayley King and even some examples from our younger year 3 students. Flox art was a way to express different and bright colours through patterns of birds and plants. After we had some inspiration we went on to Canva to start our digital flox art. During this fun digital art project we learnt how to use Canva and how to use cool tools on Canva like transparency.

Pearl

The second digital art project we worked on in the Kāhu space was titled ‘All about me’. This project was based on the keynote app. The final masterpiece was a silhouette of the side of the person’s face filled with shapes of things that were a big part of their life, or something that they valued. To complete the art we were given many shapes to experiment with. We even learnt how to edit shapes and our silhouette to match our personal selves. We learnt many more tools on the keynote to help express our values through the keynote.

Pearl

The third digital art was called pop art. The first step to our pop art was learning about what it was. We first got to see some amazing pop art that people around the world had created. After that we learned a bit  and started creating pop art. We used the camera to take a photo of ourselves posing. Next we edited our photo to filter our photo into black and white. Then we could finally go into markup and pour all our creativity into creating a funky background and colour our clothes. While creating our Pop art we learnt how to take photos on camera, how to edit and add filters to our photos and how to draw using Markup on photos.

Tayler

The digital art journey has helped us by helping us develop our technology skills and by teaching more digital tools we can use later on when doing other digital art projects. The digital art projects were also fun opportunities for us students to express our creativity in a way we are engaged, entertained and excited

Pearl, Georgia & Eric

Kahu tech students are making a wallhanging this year, which will include their Pepeha and two, star quilt blocks. Precision sewing is required in order for the pieces of material to come together with all seams matching.

Kabir has completed the first of his star quilt blocks. He chose his pattern and followed directions online to construct the block.

It is important to talk about and remember all the things we love in our life! What are you grateful for?

Abigail, Musa, Diyon and Caliya enjoyed drawing, writing and sharing all the things they love in their lives!

As part of the enviro specialist programme, students learnt about biosecurity and how vital it is to New Zealand’s primary industries and environment.

They took on the role of being a Biosecurity Inspector for MPI, (The Ministry for Primary Industries) and closely observed seed samples which were supposedly being brought into the country at an airport.

Using a magnifying glass and tweezers, the “inspectors” identified and picked out any seeds and materials which were foreign.

They then either passed or failed the seeds, determining whether they could be a threat to our primary industries.

Students understood how vigilant and vital MPI officers are in keeping New Zealand pest free.