Omakere Enviro Workshops

Our students have been working co operatively in House based Enviro groups getting together every 3rd week on a Wednesday afternoon.  The students chose their own enviro names. Pourerere Pollution Police, Motere Moas, Leaftastic Longrange.  The Houses have been involved in hands on environmentally related workshops ranging from apple picking from our school apple trees, introducing a worm farm to help with our  food scraps, recycling paper waste into fire starters, rubbish audits, pest control, bug hotel designing.  We are very lucky to have Amy Davidson (enviro school facilitator) supporting us and bringing her knowledge to our tamariki . 

Please check out what we have been up to below.

Our work with the Kahikatea Stand receiving great media coverage and recognition!

School News and HB Regional Council recently profiled Omakere School's Enviroschool Journey! 

Enjoy our articles.

Designing, Creating, Building, and Sorting and Analysing our Seed Catchers!

Autumn  2020  we had a big project as our goal: To collect seed from the Kahikatea stand on Amblethorne Station

Firstly our senior students designed seed catchers to place at the Kahikatea trees. The seed catchers had to meet a criteria:

• To be strong enough to withstand the wind, rain, and pests for 7 weeks!

• To be designed so that they had a wide catchment area to gather seed 

• To use materials we had or recyclable materials

• To keep the gathered seed safe from birds

Second we had a whole school visit to the Kahikatea stand to put the seed catchers into place. Our Kahikatea visit was an emotional day . We saw the impact drought over the Summer has had on our environment. Our Kahikatea trees did have some new growth and some of the female trees were seeding which is fantastic, but the majority were not going as well as we would like. Many of our native seedlings had not survived the dry. There was evidence of stock damage with our bug tree wrap homes and tracking boxes destroyed. We searched for evidence of seeds on female trees and remarked these trees with our "pink ribbon" including a bow added by a passionate student to make the Kahikatea feel special. We have reset our tree wraps and will check them soon. A group of students helped the seniors build and put into place the seed catchers they had designed in class. These seed catchers have been strategically placed to gather seed to be propagated at school. We enjoyed our time together as a school with our seniors using amazing tuakana-teina skills and manaakitanga to care for their groups. We left hoping for rain soon.

Kay Griffiths went to the Kahikatea Stand during Lockdown and gathered the senior students’ seed collectors from Term One. Kay said the seed collectors collected a good number of seed. We had a little (Lockdown) while to wait before catching up with Kay and planting these new Kahikatea seeds in our shade houses with Carol Burkin.  There's a photo of the The last Kahikatea seeds we planted - can you find it? We are proud of being able to help this rare stand of Kahikatea through our work in the stand and by seed propagation. It will be a very special day indeed when our Kahikatea seedlings are strong enough to be planted back alongside their parent trees!

Kahikatea seed catchers were successful!

Back at school post COVID-19, the senior students used maths and science to investigate  how effective our seed catchers were. Each seed catcher had been designed, built and set up at the Kahikatea stand in Term One.  The groups sorted and classified the contents! Wow we had kahikatea seeds, spiders, insect parts, leaf litter, and a variety of indistinguishable items in every catcher!

Some of the questions that arose from the students (and adults) were around the discovery that when the kahikatea seeds are found at the stand they have a red attached that we had noticed earlier is designed to attract birds to eat and spread the seed. Our 'dried' seeds no longer had these fruit! Students learnt the kahikatea seed is a podocarp which means the seeds sit on a sweet, colourful, fleshy, "foot". In the case of kahikatea this is bright orange when ripe and the seed is dark with a waxy bloom like a dark grape has.

The seeds gathered have now been planted into our shadehouses to start growing! Good luck little seeds!

Our Kaupapa

The Enviroschools kaupapa is about creating a healthy, peaceful, sustainable world through people teaching and learning together.

Kaupapa is a Māori concept that has no direct translation in English but encompasses ideas of foundations, principles and philosophy. Our kaupapa guides all that we do and is embodied in five guiding principles that underpin the whole Enviroschools journey:

• Empowered Students are enabled to participate in meaningful ways in the life of their early childhood centre or school. Their unique perspectives are valued for the knowledge and insight that they bring, and they are supported to take action for real change.

• Learning for Sustainability recognises the types of teaching and learning that use connecting experiences to develop holistic and ecological perspectives, foster student enquiry, decision-making, action, and reflection, and create sustainable outcomes.

• Māori Perspectives honours the status of tangata whenua in this land and the value of indigenous knowledge and wisdoms in enriching and guiding learning and action.

• Respect for the Diversity of People and Cultures acknowledges the unique gifts, contributions and perspectives of individuals and groups, reinforcing the value of participatory decision-making and collaborative action.

• Sustainable Communities act in ways that nurture people and nature, now and in the future, to maintain the health and viability of our environment, society, culture and economy.