Ta Dah!

Finally on the last day of the term it was fine enough for the drain painting group to get painting their slogans next to two of the storm water drains at school. This is so everyone who goes past these drains could be reminded that these drains lead straight to the sea and not to put any rubbish down them.

No Rubbish Down This Drain!

Working together to get the job done.

Drains Lead To Sea

Carefully does it!

What happens next........ how will we know if we have been successful in keeping rubbish out of the school drains so that only water flows to the sea and our beaches?
Two of the junior classes are working on keeping leaves out of the drains and we will do another audit of all 26 school drains next term to see if there is less rubbish being put in them.

The Bee Lady

Today we had a visit from the Bee Lady. She is a kaitiaki too. She cares about bees. She told us they are super important because they pollinate 80% of all the flowers, fruit and vegetables. There are about 20,000 different kinds of bees. Only Honey Bees make honey. They make honey to feed on.
People like to eat their honey too and we tasted some today. We also made candles out of bees wax, answered quiz questions and labelled the parts of a bee.

But that wasn't all......

We also went to visit Rooms 8 and 9 and shared a story with them about a stream that wasn't looked after and became polluted because people kept putting the wrong things into it.

Then today we delivered this letter to each of the classes in the school. We felt very proud, happy and special to be able to share what we had learned and to be asking others to help too. We also  took the posters we had made to some of the classrooms too.

Dear Stanhopers,

We have learned that stormwater drains all lead to the sea, so we have decided to pass this message on to you.

Our school has at least 26 stormwater drains, and there is rubbish down every single one of them! This rubbish goes out into the sea and harms all sea creatures.

Save our seas by not littering near stormwater drains.

Be a KAITIAKI today!!!

From Room 14

Keep reading our blog to find out what our next action is!!!

Poster Parade

Today at morning play some of us took our poster cards that we had painted out into the playground. We showed our slogans to the rest of the school, to the teachers in the staffroom and to Ms Tafa in her office. Some of the juniors needed us to tell them what the posters said. Some of the seniors cheered and asked questions and we asked them if they knew why we didn't want them to put rubbish down the stormwater drains.
We really enjoyed letting the rest of the school know about stormwater drains leading to the sea. We might even do this again tomorrow! But there is still more to come.

Ready to go!

Hmm what does that say?

Do you know why we don't want rubbish down the drains?

Back to the Stormwater Drains

We decided that the rest of the school needs to know that stormwater drains go straight to the sea because there is a lot of rubbish in our school drains. Whatever goes down a stormwater drain will end up in the sea. It's not like dirty water from our houses that is treated and cleaned before it is released out to sea again, stormwater just goes to the sea! So rubbish, oil, paint, detergent all end up in the sea and effect sea life as well as our beaches.
We decided that....
the rest of the school needed to know and our parents and families need to know this too.
So... we are making posters, making signs, telling a story, designing drain messages and writing a letter.
Here we are hard at work. keep reading our blog to find out what we are going to do!

Poster makers

Designer

Painters

The drain painters practising

Concentration!

Wastewise

Christine from Wastewise visited  the Mighty Middle School this week. Mrs C collected all the rubbish that the whole school had thrown away on Tuesday. On Wednesday all that rubbish was taken to the Hall and weighed and sorted.
Our job was to count all the recyclable things that had been thrown into the landfill bins in just one day. This is how much there was...

23 yoghurt pots

40 plastic containers

10 drink bottles

70 juice/drink packets

11 coffee cups!

That was 154 items altogether in one day.

In one school week that would be 770 items and in a whole term (10 weeks) that would be 7700 things put in the landfill bins instead of being recycled.

The Mighty Middle School shared what they had found out at assembly on Friday.

Our message to the senior school was put your recyclable things in the recycling bins!