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?  

Look what's happening in Tawhirimatea...

Yay we are getting new doors!  They open out onto the covered deck and mean that we can have more variable spaces to work! 

We worked in the hall today so that we ween't in the way and hopefully it will be finished tomorrow!  It is looking great!

Enviro schools with Kirsty

Today we had Kirsty come in to talk about the 5 guiding principles of Enviroschools. She started at assembly with the metaphor of a river and us all being on the waka of learning and creating a healthy community.

We looked at a picture of a community and were able to identify what is happening and how that is a good thing for our world! 

The 5 guiding principles are: 

1.  Sustainable Communities
2. Maori Perspectives
3. Learning for Sustainability
4. Empowered Students
5. Respect for diversity of people and cultures

When we have learnt a bit more and remembered the things that we are doing here are Makaraka we will update you further! 

Here is out Tawhirimatea Whakatauaki: 

All in a day's work @ TED Lab!

We had our first rocket test flight last Thursday!  It was so much fun!  The rockets went well but they were all different!  I wonder what are the things that make them different? 

Report format for each test flight. 

After we have flown them we need to file a report about the performance of the rocket.  This helps us to know if the rocket has performed at expectation and whether we need to make some changes! 

Once we had filed our reports, we present our findings to the rest of TED Lab!  This helps other teams to think about their rockets to as well as seeing what has happened to our rockets!  

All in a day's work! 

Here we are presenting our findings! 

TED Lab tests the weather!

TED Lab is developing ways of testing the weather to check it is safe to launch the rocket!

We are understanding how the rain and clouds are formed by evaporation! 

Can you see the water droplets forming? 

We are learning about air pressure and how you can predict if it is going to rain! This machine is called a barometer! 

The needle will go up and down...  Does that mean that it will rain or be sunny? 

We are making weather vanes to see which direction the wind is blowing so we can point the rocket the right way!  

Is it pointing to North? 

We are certainly a professional and safety conscious company!

Water Rocket goes rogue!

This morning we tried launching our rockets with water!  It was hilarious because it went rogue!  It shot all over the place and actually went backwards!  

It was really surprising that all the water shot out so fast!  There was literally nothing left!  

I wonder if you can recognise what went wrong and how it can be fixed?