Team Kāpuka
It was great to welcome back our learners at the start of the term; everyone seems relaxed and ready for a new year of exciting learning.
Ka mihi nui atu ki a koutou!
Team Kāpuka have started the year with lots of fun learning experiences to help us get to know our new teachers and classmates.
Room 2 and 3 have been learning all about our new school name - Te Kāpehu Riccarton School and the names of our school buildings. We went on a scavenger hunt to search for the spaces on our map and found out the future site of our new learning block. We are also learning to say our new mihi and our gifted school pepeha from our mana whenua - Ngai Tūāhuriri.
'Garden to Table' has kicked off this week and we are excited to dive deep into our learning this year with a focus on sustainability. This starts with us taking care of our gardens, chickens, worm farms and compost. All of this valuable and 'hands on' learning will hopefully inspire a few new projects around our awesome school. Watch this space!!
Room 1 had a very busy session in the garden....
Garden to Table - 16 Hui-tanguru 2021
Over the summer months, the garden at our kura has been growing and growing and growing! With that growth we had plenty of beautiful fruit and vegetables just waiting for us to return to school.
Today Room 1 had their first 'Garden to Table' lesson where Karen talked about growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing kai from our school garden. The tamariki helped to harvest the rhubarb. Look how big it got! This rhubarb will be used over the next few weeks to make some delicious dishes.
There were also some very juicy tomatoes that were picked today from our greenhouse. They looked so tasty!
The children each had the chance to plant some Little Garden seeds. There were pepper, broccoli, basil, chives, watercress seeds and many more! The children made sure that the soil was damp, then placed the seeds over the soil before covering up the seeds with more soil. We can’t wait to see how the fruit and vegetables grow over the coming weeks.
Me ngaki tātou i te māra! Let’s all go and weed the garden!
Colin told the tamariki that there had also been a lot of growth of weeds over summer. We were asked to weed to see if underneath those weeds we could find some vegetables growing. Underneath the weeds, we found an abundance of potatoes so we collected them. It was a fantastic morning of working away together!
Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year is being celebrated across our classes with a variety of activities and the sharing of stories. We have learnt that the Chinese lunar calendar is similar to the Maramataka - Māori lunar calendar, and that the ways in which we celebrate our many cultural festivals include celebrating with food and family, something we love to do in Team Kāpuka. We are planning to share delicious Chinese food of dumplings and noodles which symbolise good fortune and a happy long life!