Last year the students in the Term 3 Sustainable Elective initiated our 'Community Food Table' with the underlying message being let's not waste food, share it with others with aroha.  Our table continues to thrive with fresh fruit and vegetables from our garden, as well as contributions from the families in our community.  The students in the Tuesday lunchtime garden group harvest the vegetables and other students set up the table from their roster system. This certainly has the feel good factor.

Hukanui School has been an Enviroschool since 1998.  We have many important student groups, some that have going for many years.  Our school's Enviro Council represent all the students in our school by sharing and asking for ideas from their classes and buddy classes.  This year's Enviro Council are another highly motivated group.  They have a clear understanding of how we work as an enviroschool, what our care code is, knowledge of our current and previous Vision Maps and how we encourage students with our Enviro Vouchers.  This year the Enviro Council's focus is to continue to encourage our students and staff to be Wrapper Free.  We are already doing a great job with this but we think we can encourage this idea even further with fun challenging activities.

This is Kai Pai Kiwi our Enviro Council Mascot

Our students are discussing and planning all the different tasks
students in our school can do to be rewarded with an Envio
Voucher.  Some of these include being actively part of an
enviro group, having Wrapper Free Lunch boxes or being a
great enviro role model. 

The students in the Living Room Specialist Group have been very busy at their breakfast meeting each Tuesday.  Not only do they care for the Living Room, completing maintenance tasks, they also spend half of this time learning about the history of the Living Room and how its environmental features work.  The students pass this learning on to other students in our school and to our visitors.  They also make regular additions and alterations to the 'Living Room Operations and Maintenance' Manual.  Each year an updated manual, a schedule of maintenance tasks and the date they were completed and any tasks that the Board of Trustees need to help us with are given to our principal Mr. Mossop.  This process helps keep the circle of life flowing through our special environmental learning centre, The Living Room.

The 2013 Living Room Operations and Maintenance
Manual is presented to Mr Mossop our principal

Students completing tasks from the Maintenance Schedule.

Year 6 students peer teaching Year 5 students about the
features of the Living Room as explained in the student
written manual.

Today in lunchtime gardening group, we cooked potato cakes using the potatoes we grew in our garden, along with our courgettes.  Grandma Payne, our very helpful and kind grandma set up the most amazing outside Masterchef  Kitchen with a recipe for us to follow and everything we needed.  It was wonderful eating food we have grown in our own garden.  Some of the student comments were:
*  I have learnt how to turn a potato cake into flour.
*  Courgettes are delicious.  I thought they would taste yucky.
*  It was fun growing the food fresh from the garden and then cooking and eating it.
*  We are lucky to have Grandma Sharon's help.

We harvested our potatoes last week. 

Grandma Sharon helped us prepare the potatoes, courgettes and eggs.

Next time we might be able to beat our own eggs.

Grandma Payne was wonderful when letting the students do all the preparing and cooking

The Potato Cakes tasted fantastic.

Room 3 have been learning about 'legacy' and what this means to them.  After a lot of discussion and using creative thinking, they believe they can leave an environmental legacy to the future students of Hukanui School.  They have been working on a plan for the area between Rooms 11 and 22.  This area has changed since the new astroturf has been put in place.  The students asked all the classes in our school what they would to see in this area.  They got 323 ideas.  Wow!  That's a lot to think about.  Using set criteria, they narrowed the ideas down.  The criteria were possible/not possible.  The possible ideas were then grouped into two groups, 'creative' and 'asked for a lot of times'.  From these final ideas, Room 3 students have come up with some draft plans to pass on to the Board of Trustees and Mr. Mossop.  Legacy is a wonderful concept to explore, helping us to think about others.

Sharing our learning at the Year 5/6 Assembly

Learning about our first Sustainable Vision Map made in 1998

Following our sustainable vision mapping on our second map made in 2007

Our latest Sustainable Vision Map

Sketching the area between Room 11 and 22.

Some of our draft plans.

Sustainable Student Groups

 Congratulations to all the students who have chosen and been selected to undertake sustainable student roles.  We had over one hundred student applications for Gully Guides, Paper Recycling and Seeds Group. Everyone who applied has been successful for at least one sustainable group.  Our Enviro Council members were selected by their classes and will regularly report to their junior buddy classes.  We than them and wish them well in their roles as they continue student actions begun many years ago.

Students in the Living Room Specialist Group complete maintenance
tasks around our enviro classroom and record them on their
maintenance schedule.

Students in the Living Room Specialist groups help in many
sustainable projects.  They even help with the packaging
of honey from our school hive.

Clearing the windows of the portholes that show the
different types of underfloor insulation.

Our Gully Guides take our visitors around many of the
sustainable projects that have been completed at our
school.  They are wonderful ambassadors.

Paper Recycling has been happening at our school for
more than 15 years.  Students record how much paper
we recycle and we are rewarded with native trees for our
gully.  The scheme is called Paper for Trees.

Wow! 2014 is all action at Hukanui School.  Our students are keen and environmentally motivated to continue our care for our school and sustainability.  Some of our enviro groups are already back to work.  They are a credit to our school, as many of the actions they undertake, they do so in their own time during lunch and play breaks.  We thank them for their ongoing commitment.

At last week's senior assembly, students involved in planning and running our Community Table were the recipients of an award from Mr Kitto on behalf of the Fairfield Rotary Club.  Mr Kitto talked about working with others and having the initiative to undertake challenges.  Our community table is back in action every Wednesday morning.  It is set up before school and remains there until all the fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs that have been harvested from our school gardens, and any donations are gone.  What a wonderful way to share with others and stop wastage of food.  Thanks everyone for your contributions over the last year.  Please feel free to take from the table.  You don't have to give food to receive it but we also welcome fresh food donations.

Brier receiving our Rotary award.

Elijah shares some of our produce with Mr Kitto

We also received a cheque for $200 that will go towards

this year's sustainable projects.

Our Community Table in action this week.  We had garlic,

broccoli, cauliflower and huge courgettes.