Opua School
This is Opua School's Blog for the 'Tui School Garden Challenge'. We are having a fantastic time and we love sharing the children's experiences and learning journey. Please use the sidebar to navigate your way to our earlier posts so you can follow our gardening journey from the beginning. Please feel free to leave comments, questions, tips and encouragement as we LOVE to hear from you all.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Last Post for the 2011 Tui Garden Challenge....
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
TELL US WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNT?
* You must measure the worm juice, as the pure worm juice is too strong.
* Keep the chook poo away from the stems of the plants because the ammonia will burn and damage the plants.
* Seeds don't always germinate, you have to be very patient.
* I learnt how to pick the vegetables, you must hold the plant at the same time.
* You must plant the seedlings about 10cm apart.
* Water, sun & soil is very important for healthy successful plants.
* We have learnt how important compost, bees, worm juice/tea is to produce large healthy crops.
WHAT CROP HAVE ENJOYED GROWING?
* We like the colourful vegetables that Tui sent us as seedlings.
* Broccoli, silver beet and beetroot, we loved the quiche we made for lunch and the roasted beetroot!
* Lettuce and parsley because they make our egg sandwiches taste delicious!
* I like picking and eating sugar snaps.
* I like beans because we really get our monies worth!
* Potatoes because it is exciting digging them up to see how many and what shape they are.
* I like seeing how the carrots have grown.
* The giant pumpkin because we are hoping for a GIANT!
WHAT HAVE YOU LIKE SO FAR ABOUT BEING INVOLVED IN THE TUI SCHOOL GARDEN CHALLENGE?
* We enjoyed receiving the Mitre 10 vouchers and we loved going shopping with them. I was a great morning out!
* It was a privilege to get the new garden tools and we have looked after them.
*We really enjoyed experiencing different plants and seeing what they grow into.
* It was fun to see the bees pollinate the flowers and learn about the importance of bees in our world. Also how we fed the weeds to the chickens and then we eat the eggs!
*We enjoyed seeing the plants grow from seed to something we can eat.
Thank you Tui for giving us the opportunity to enter this competition. We have learnt a lot about gardening and how to look after the garden. We know that your garden products work and that our local Mitre 10 stock all your products.
We have had a GREAT time and we are very grateful to our wonderful teacher Mrs. Young who has allowed us to fit the gardening around our school work. She is a brilliant teacher!
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Broad Beans Aplenty
But now we have a new generation of EDAMAME lovers!
The girls picked 130 pods of lovely juicy broad bean pods this very morning.
Week 9 of the Tui Competition
On the 23rd of August a box of seedlings turned up from ZELANDIA. We planted the Pak Choy and Mustard Greens (ruruhau) in this garden. Here is a pic of the garden today...wait for it...wait for it...
BAM
How's THAT for healthy plants? Worm castings, warm weather and generous watering have all helped to make this garden a beautiful sight...and tasty too :-)
Hi Opua School! We learnt so much from your very informative report about cooking your quiche. We are now looking at your story about the strawberries and we are interested in knowing about what the green cone system is, as seen in your photo... What is it?
Monday, September 12, 2011
Worm Tea anyone??
mmmmmmmmmmmmm ...... delicious worm tea.. |
As you can see we have a high tech way of delivering the tea to our plants, this is what we call.."Why bother with buying a watering can when we have these pots aye?" (Reduce, Re-use, Recycle ;-)) |
Yum Yum! |
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Hail to the Caretaker...The Caretaker Man
Flowers + Bees = FOOD
Bees are AMAZING creatures! |
Here is a sample of our Bee Magnets - the flowers in the pots, not the pupils!! |
Otherwise Fine...Otherwise it's Dandy
Jack Frost!
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
WHAT A WONDERFUL SURPRISE!!
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Cooking our Winter Veg
The children decided that the best use of the produce would be to cook a crustless quiche.
They sliced up the silverbeet, broke down the broccoli into small florets and cut the brussel sprouts in half. The broccoli was blanched on boiling water, then refreshed in very cold water to keep the lovely green colour.
A small amount of flour was tossed in with the silverbeet and this mixture was put in a greased dish with the broccoli and brussel sprouts and cheese.
Eggs, salt, pepper, milk and parsley were all mixed together and poured over the top of the vegetables.
After 30 minutes in the oven we had a lovely golden brown quiche which was served up to the children of Room 4.
The beetroot was cut into cubes, dressed with salt, petter and butter then roasted in the oven. This was a hit with the class (and staff) as most children had only ever tried beetroot from a can!
Gardening offers hands-on, experiential learning opportunities in a wide array of disciplines, including the natural and social sciences, math, language arts (e.g., through garden journaling), visual arts (e.g., through garden design and decoration), and nutrition (e.g. cooking with food they know where it has come from and have had a hand in growing/nurturing)
Harvesting the Winter Crop
The girls harvested 2 heads of broccoli, silverbeet, brussel sprouts and beetroot.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Week 3 - Strawberries
Week 3 - The Sun Came Out!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Week 3 - The TUI Voucher has Arrived!!
been a bit premature!