Saturday 4 November 2017

Gore District Council Awards

Gore Main School was nominated for the Mainland Minerals Environment Award to be presented at the 2017 Gore District Council Awards!  It was such an honour!  Here is what the nomimee wrote about us...

REASON FOR NOMINATION: 

Gore Main School have been an Enviro-School since 2009 and have moved from a Bronze to Silver Enviro-School in this time.  This year the focus for them has been for the school to move from a Silver to a Green/Gold Enviro-School.  To be awarded Green/Gold Enviro status is a very big deal and means that everybody in the school (staff, BOT, children) are committed to sustainable practise.  Reflection about where to go next and how the school can be more sustainable occurs within the school and everyone is involved.  All students have key values that they are learning about.  These are:  Sustainable practise/community, Taonga (Maori perspectives), Actively Engaged Students, Respect for our Enviro-School and Strong diversity.  The first letter of these key values spells out STARS – which aligns with the school motto ‘Reach for the stars’.  The school is trying to provide a learning environment with the ‘environment’ as the focus.  Currently the senior children are building and designing gardens to be able to grow food/produce for the community.  For example, flowers are going to be grown to give to rest-homes and potatoes may be grown as food for those that require it.  Gore Main School values their community and want to give back to it by doing this, and teach children some important skills along the way.  The Junior children are studying bees.  Recently Gore Main was gifted a bee hive (gentle Leafcutter bees) by Gore New World.  It is definitely out there in the community that Gore Main is serious about the Environment.  The staff at Gore Main School show passion for the Environment and this is really obvious as you see students out in their school, looking after the hens, growing food, recycling fruit scraps into composts and worm farms, recycling milk 4 schools containers and trying to eliminate rubbish from their school.  This school deserves a nomination for this award.   

So, on Friday the 3rd of November, Mrs M, Mrs Hargest, Mrs Russell, Miss MacBeth and Miss McWhirter took 11 Gore Main School children to the awards!  This was a very special gala event and the children and teachers were very excited.  We had a very nice dinner together (Lambshanks, mash, and cheesecake for desert).  There was a photobooth there that the children (and Mrs M) really enjoyed.  It was a terrific night and the Gore District Council really should be pleased with the great night they put on.  We didn't win the Mainland Minerals award, but it was still a terrific honour to be noticed in the community for the work that we are doing at Gore Main.


Limehills GREEN/GOLD Enviro-School Visit

On Monday the 30th of October Mrs M took Millie, Hunter, Lily and Anouk to visit Limehills School to have a look around their Green/Gold Enviro-School.  This was an exciting opportunity as it was also Limehill School’s pet/creation day so they had animals, stalls, and art to look at, as well.  There was even Mr Whippy and a yummy BBQ going!


While we were there we attended a workshop (run by the Limehills’ students) about Leafcutter bees and gained some knowledge that was beneficial to our school, as we have our own Leafcutter bee hive.  We learnt that Leafcutter bees and Honey-bees can live side by side and will not attack each other, but the key is to have lots of food for them.  We also learnt that we must have food right through the year for our Leafcutter bees and that we need to consider this and plant accordingly.

There were many great things to look at at Limehills School.  They had magnificent art displays all around the school and areas for the children to play in.  They had a mini bushwalk, mud kitchen, eco-huts and a virtual bee-hive.  A highlight was watching the Limehills children suit up into their bee suits and go and look at their Honey-bee hive!













Friday 15 September 2017

Our New Leafcutter Bee House!

Just last week we were donated a leaf cutter bee house and real leafcutter bees (inside their cocoons!) and a bumble bee nesting box by New World Gore.









Gore Main Newsletter: Bee House Article

Monday 10 July 2017

Sustainability: Eating our own produce

In the summer the apricots on the fruit trees in our orchard riped. We carefully picked the fruit and made yummy apricot crumble in Room 6. It was absolutely delicious!
We can't wait for next summer to pick some more apricots from our own school trees.
YUM!


Milk for Schools Glamping Farm Experience

Earlier in the year when each class was learning about the processes and practices we have in place currently at Gore Main School, Room 6 learned about the Fonterra Milk for Schools programme and the recycling process the cartons go through.

Room 6 created this video to teach our community about the Milk for Schools recycling process and entered it in a Fonterra video competition to win a over night stay glamping on a dairy farm.

The videos went to a nationwide vote and....Room 6 won the South Island prize!

The prize included:

  • Fully catered overnight stay on a Fonterra dairy farm near Edendale in a flash glamping teepee.
  • Visit to the dairy shed to watch the cows get milked
  • Visit to the Edendale Fonterra Factory and a tour around it
  • Red band gumboots, milking overalls and other Fonterra merchandise 
  • Plus lots of other cool games and experiences on the farm. 

Here is a video Room 6 created about their glamping experience

Room 6 had such a great time on our trip! They will remember the experience for ever. Now our Year 2 class (Room 6) are the milk monitors at Gore Main School. They are in charge of the Milk for Schools Programme and deliver the milk to the classrooms and then collect the empty cartons on Friday for recycling.

'Kikorangi Whetu' Blue Star Hebe

Our school motto is "Reach for the Stars" and this year we have started a tradition which reminds and encourages all of our graduating Year 6 children to reach for the stars.

Each New Entrant child this has propagated their own Kikorangi Whetu Hebe, this native plant will grow alongside them as the grow and learn at Gore Main School. When they graduate as a Year 6 student they will be presented their own Kikorangi Whetu hebe shrub to take and plant in their own garden as a reminder to continue to reach for the stars even after they have left GMS.

Here is the process of propagating our Kikorangi Whetu Hebe plant

Wednesday 28 June 2017

Waste Audit

WasteNet visited Gore Main School during Term One.  Each class received education on waste management and had their questions answered about issues like this:  What can go into the yellow bin?  What can go into the red bin?  Where does the yellow bin recycling go?  Where does the red wheelie bin rubbish go? etc.  Some classes participated in a waste audit.  They saved their rubbish for one week and then tipped it out onto a tarp.  The rubbish was then sorted through!  It was realised very quickly that we are all being very careless with our rubbish and that we could be more efficient with recycling!  It was very eye opening!







  

Children's Day 2017

Gore Main School participated in Children's Day again this year!  We wanted to show our community that we care about them and also to spread the message of sustainability.  We decided to grow sunflowers from seed and give them away to everybody!  Sunflowers grow, just like children's learning!

We grew the sunflowers for Children's Day and transplanted them into egg carton sections.  

We made signs to show that the gift to our community was from Gore Main School
 

Tuesday 27 June 2017

Our Diversity Wall

This wall is going to help us to remember about the important component of our Gore Main Enviro-Stars...STRONG DIVERSITY.


Our Gore Main School Hen House

Our Hen House which was set up as part of Room 3's inquiry project in 2016 shows the Enviro-Stars!

Sustainability: We raised the chicks ourselves, they are fed food scraps from the children at school, the hens are eating our food scraps (plus playing pellets for supplements) they lay us eggs and we sell their eggs to make money to buy more feed and cool things for our school.

Taonga: The hens are our special treasure which we respect and care for. We are living off our land and providing for ourselves.

Actively engaged: The children are running the hen house and caring for the hens themselves, this is part of our inquiry learning in the classrooms.

Respect: We are showing great respect to our hens and to the environment by disposing of our food scraps by feeding them to the hens. When Blossom (aka 'Hoppy') got sick Room 8 showed her the upmost respect by caring for her and doing everything they could to help her get better. Unfortunately, she could not be saved and they made the difficult choice to have her put to sleep peacefully by the vet. This was respecting her rights to be without pain.

Strong Diversity: The children are learning about and how to care for a different animal that many of them may not have had experience with. The hens must be fed a diverse range of foods to ensure they maintain a healthy diet. Different classes/children are involved in looking after the hens through a roster system.

Sustainabiltiy - Using our produce to feed our people


Already over 2017 we have had so many wonderful opportunities to demonstrate 'sustainability' within our Enviro-School.  We have made apple and apricot crumble, fried up potatoes for our whole school and shared corn amongst some classes!  More importantly, the students have grown this food themselves!  It is so important to share the process of food growing with students.  Also, it is wonderful to see children involved in Maori perspectives like tuakana/teina (more abled person helping someone less abled) and kotahitangi (everybody involved) in our Enviro-School.  We have many photos of sustainability involving kai!    

SUSTAINABILITY WITH APPLES!









SUSTAINABILITY WITH POTATOES/CORN













Gore Harvest Festival 2017

Gore Main School acknowledges that we are a part of an amazing community!  It integral to be a part of a community as we aim to be a Green/Gold Enviro-School.  This year we made a special effort to enter and be a part of  the Gore Harvest Festival, run by The GORE GARDEN CLUB.  Children from a range of classes made different things and entered them into this event!  There was baking, tin-can creations, egg-carton creations, art, colouring-in, etc.  We really made an impact on our community because the organisers of the event shouted the staff morning tea to thank us for the effort that was put in.  Many students won prizes!  Thank you Gore Garden Club, you are an incredible asset to our community and we will be entering in this event again NEXT YEAR!








ENVIRO-STARS

To be an effective Enviro-School means that you to follow a set of principles and guidelines.  These cover a range of core learning and values and they are...

Maori Perspectives
Respect for Diversity
Sustainable communities
Learning for sustainability
Empowered/engaged students

It is important that staff and students understand what these are and how to deliver suitable programmes in their own place, to empower people and participation.  (The 4 P's).

At the beginning of the year the staff got together and changed the set of principles to suit Gore Main School.  Our motto is 'REACH FOR THE STARS' so we thought it would make sense to link the principles with our motto, rather than having a huge range of things to follow and think about.

Here is what we devised...

ENVIRO-STARS - We are learning about these and are enjoying seeing how the things we do link so effectively into these principles!