Makaraka School - Learning on the beach!

We all love Kai Moana!   The mighty Tangaroa provides a large variety of Kai that is very good for us!  From  fish to shellfish to seaweed there is something for everyone!  

On Monday May 10, our whole school went to Kaiti Beach and Gisborne Fisheries to learn about Kai Moana in the natural environment and how it is processed after it is harvested. We ended the day with a walk to collect rubbish!  We need to look after Tangaroa!  

At the rocky shore we had Amy from the Marine Reserve came to talk to us about the Moana and help us to identify some of the species. We spent some time looking around the rock pools and even found an octopus hiding in there! 

AQ highlight at the beach was the lunch Mr Swann made for us!  Mussels on the open fire!  We learnt that you can harvest them and eat them right on the spot!  

Yum

We had two fisheries officers come and tell us about their job and how they check the boats and catch that people do around the East Coast!  

Make sure this doesn't happen to you! 

Mr Zame showed us around his family business.  How fish are processed and bought into the factory.  We saw the pools of crayfish waiting to go off to China!  They love East Coast Crays!  

What a fun and exciting learning day!  

Wild Kai - Bush Stoves

We are learning about all different types of Kai.  Where it comes from, how to cook it and how different cultures think about kai!  We all need Kai and it is an important part of all cultures social and emotional hauora!  

Today we were learning about Wild Kai and how to identify some types of kai that we can eat from the wild.  We will continue with this next Tuesday at Waihirere with Sam The Trap Man helping us!  

In preparation for this visit we made hobo stoves to take to Waihirere to cook on.  Hobo stoves are little burner stoves made from a large and small tin can!  We tested them out by making pancakes and eating them!  Yum! 

Yum yum yum! Can't wait for some bush kai next week!  

Please send along any tin cans like spaghetti can size that we can use as our billys!  

Cedenco Foods - Behind the scenes!

As part of our Kai learning we visited Cedenco Foods to see how food is processed.  Cedenco is a local company owned by a Japanese Family who source local produce and turn it into puree, powder or frozen foods.  

We got to taste some of it: 

See how it is tested and kept to high quality: 

And see how the food is processed and packaged! 

What a great learning experience!  Thanks Carla and the team! I wonder what facts you can remember about Cedenco for example:

What does Brix measure?  

How many different fruit and vegetables do they process?  

What countries buy Cedenco products?  

Hue season!

Do you know what Hue are?  Some people may know them as gourds.  The year 5 and 6's went down to Brendan Barker-Quin's house to harvest some to  use in our art and production!  

Hue are a kind of pumpkin which grows on a vine.  They are harvested around the end of summer when the stem goes brown.  

They were used by Maori people to carry water and store other kinds of food high in the trees as the skin goes super hard when they are dry.  Hue can also be eaten but more likely when they are young as they are sweet and moist then.  

We are hoping to dry our hue and then paint them up and decorate them for our production!  

Thanks Brendan we learnt heaps about cultivated kai and bees also looking at your garden!  I didn't know that foxgloves are a good companion plant because they have a long tap root that brings up nutrients from deep down in the soil.