Matariki Planting

Our hard working and dedicated Enviro Agents braved the rain to plant cabbages. They will be harvested during Matariki for the school to feast on.

Veggie Stall

Please support the Woodstock Enviro Agents on Wednesday 27 Feb who are selling organic tomatoes, beans, silverbeet and potatoes.

We would love to see you there.

Our Enviro Goals for 2013

The focus on our Woodstock Learning this year is on ‘Building Positive Relationships’. This means we will be focusing on and encouraging all children to show empathy and respect for other people and for other cultures. We will also be encouraging positive self-image, positive communication and cooperation.

To help support this learning we have two main focusses for our Enviroschools project this year:

Firstly we are involved in a project called “Exploring Sustainable Communities through Kai/Food.” This project has been initiated by the Enviroschools Foundation in partnership with the Tindall Foundation and WWF. These three organisations are keen to see innovative, creative and future focussed school and communities learning together to enhance well-being and community spirit. These principles and values are also an integral part of the NZ Curriculum and correlate to our school vision for all students to contribute positively to their own well-being and that of society and the environment.

Secondly we would like to enhance our school environment. The outcomes we like to achieve are to:

1 Create a realisation in our students that, although their actions may be small, they do contribute to improving the environment

2 Instil a sense of pride and responsibility in our school community (staff, students and parents) about our school

3 Enhance areas of the school through a planned targeted approach that will be sustainable (e.g. rubbish bins, the large red wall at the entrance way)

4 As above, create new learning opportunities for students and bring meaningful contexts for Literacy, Numeracy, Social Sciences, Science and Technology curriculum areas.

 

We need your votes

We have registered for a competition to win a classroom full of’ Parmco kitchen appliances for Woodstock School. We now need your votes. There are also opportunities to win iPads, laptops, Let’s Cook aprons and a there are cookbooks by Masterchef Brett McGregor up for grabs. The website will also have weekly cooking challenges, new skills to learn and great easy recipes that can be cooked at home.

Access the website by visiting: www.letscookwithparmco.co.nz

Enter Woodstock School and cast your vote.

Click on vote for your school

Type in school name:Woodstock

Select region: Waikato

Catergory: 300-499 pupils

We would love it if you could take the time to vote for us in this competition.

Thanks for supporting our Veggie Stall

A quick blog to say thank you to all of those people who supported our recent Veggie Stall. The Enviro Agents raised $22.50. This money will be reinvested back into our Veggie Garden (Veggie Heaven).

Look out for our next Veggie Stall. We'll let you know when the next one is via our blog.

Veggie Stall

Bring your money to school on Monday 23 July. The Enviro Agents are holding a Veggie Stall. Produce on sale include:

• Silver beet
• cabbage
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• parsley
• and course worm wee

We would love it if you could support this worth while event.

Enviro News:

We have a huge team of BNZ “closed for good” workers here helping to enhance our school’s environment. They hope to stain the senior playground, replenish the sand in the junior sandpit, repaint games on the court, clean out compost bins to name just a few of things they will be doing. We are really looking forward to seeing what can be achieved and we would like to thank Stacey McLean for organising this wonderful opportunity for us. Thanks also to those families who have lent us their wheelbarrows for the day.

This term our enviro-agents are busy in our vegetable garden. They have just planted more winter veggies. They hope to have some ready for harvest in time for Matariki. They are also learning about and making preparations for growing strawberries.

A junior enviro-group has been started thanks to Ms Hooper. They have called themselves the “Greenie Gardeners”. They meet regularly and have already planted bulbs and undertaken the huge job of weeding our front entrance gardens.

We hope soon to start a regular stall on a Monday night selling our produce and worm wee. More info on this when we’re ready to go.

Please, please, please don’t forget to add your ideas and comments to our tree in the school reception area. Your input is vital to our planning. All comments and feedback are most welcome. Pick up your sticker from Mrs Allen.

Meet our Groovy Gardeners

Here are our Groovy Gardeners planting daffodil bulbs and cinerea plants.  These are a group of enthusiastic junior school children who are keen to help look after our environment at Woodstock School.  We are certainly lucky to have them involved in our Enviro Programme.

Hard at work

Here are some of the Enviro Agents hard at work in Vegie Heaven.  Thanks again to Ethan Johnson for these photos

Planting Time at Vegie Heaven

Thanks to Ethan Johnson for these photos of our latest round of planting in Vegie Heaven

We need your help

As part of our continuing “Enviro School Vision” we would like to gather ideas from our Woodstock School Community in order to reflect on the process we are undertaking. This will enable us to have a shared sense of inter-relatedness growing within our school, our community and our environment in regards to the direction we are taking.  To achieve this we asking each  group within our community, for example, students, parents, whanau, PTA, BOT, staff, Pasifika, Somali, other important cultural groups etc to record their thoughts on a colour-coded ‘sticky note’ and leave it on our tree.

We would like you to consider these ideas:

·       What do you see as the positive aspects of Enviro-schools for our children and community?

·       What do think should be the key priorities? (As they relate to you/your group)?

·       How can you help? – do you have any resources available that we can draw on to help us?

·       What could we do to make our school an even better enviro-school?

·       Any other comments you would like to add…

We appreciate and value your support with this. Sticky notes will be available at various meetings you attend as members of our school and at the office if you are a parent or a visitor to our school.

Your comments will be collated and published when this process is completed.
Many thanksThe Woodstock School Enviro Committee.

Times up for your Spud in a Bucket

How are those potatoes going? It’s the last weekend for watering and bestowing lots of tender loving care on your potatoes. The Annual Woodstock School Potato Growing Competition is Tues 13 Dec. Please bring your buckets in on Tuesday morning to your classroom and we’ll see who as the biggest and the most potatoes.

Meet our new Scarecrow "Sticky"

As part of Room 15's technology unit 'Making Plastic Fantastic" these clever boys reused milk bottles to make this wonderful scarecrow for our garden. His name is 'Sticky"  He will make a wonderful addition to Vegie Heaven

Meet Sticky

Gardening Goodies

Mrs Avis Leeson kindly donated these healthy looking cabbage trees for our new school entrance garden.

  

Thanks to all those families who kindly donated McCain Veggies barcodes. We won a watering can, gardening gloves, packets of seeds, netting for our strawberries, plant labels and a sack 

 Sarah Pitts shows off a selection of our winning goodies 



Another successful Vegie Stall

In our most recent vegie stall, we sold silverbeet, cabbage, celery, parsley, rhubarb and worm wee.  Thanks to everyone who came and made our stall a success.

All our produce ready to sell

Setting Up

It was busy on the stall

Room 4 plant a Kauri Tree

A big thank you to Room 4's teacher Mrs Addison who donated a Kauri tree for our hill area.  Her class helped plant the tree, which will provide great shade for children using the slide.

The Kauri tree donated by Mrs Addison and planted by her class, Room 4.

More Vegies ready to sell

Vegie Heaven is looking amazing at the moment.  We have all sorts of different vegetables just about ready to pick.  Look out for our next vegie stall coming up next week.

Hamish is getting the Cabbages ready for harvest

These Vegies are huge

 

Daisy and Hamish have been working hard in Vegie Heaven

We have to try and get rid of these snails trying to eat our lettuces

Some early broccoli ready for the teachers to eat

Yum lettuce

Our Strawberries are growing well

Herbs make any meal delicious

More Herbs in Herb Heaven

Wow "It's taller than us"

We told you Vegie Heaven is looking amazing!



Potato Growers - Ready, Set, Grow

Children today got given their seed potato for our Spud in a Bucket competition.  I wonder who can grow the biggest and the most potatoes in their bucket.

Keen spud growers – buckets in hand – ready for planting

Our Enviro Agents helping our Potato growers

This will be worth the wait

Spud in a Bucket Ready to go!!

Get your entry in for our famous Spud in the Bucket competition.  As you can see the seed potatoes are all ready to go. 

Which Potato is the winning one?

  

Some potatoes are sprouting already!