Designing a New Playground

In 2012 the inquiry group from Enner Glynn School have been designing a new playground to replace the adventure playground. So far we have had heaps of awesome ideas but unfortunately we can't use them all. We had to set criteria for our new play space This criteria was *It has to suit 5-11 year olds. *It has to be challenging but safe. *It has to be fun. *It has to enhance the environment. *It has to fit a budget. We learnt how to use bubble.us to mind map our ideas. We also used google sketch up to come up with some design ideas. Our designer came to talk to our REACH group. We shared ideas about the types of activities children at Enner Glynn like to do at lunchtime. He took our ideas to help him design our playground. Next week we will meet with him again and get to see what he has come up with! Unfortunately our designer was unavailable for next week but instead he kindly handed us his proposed plan. When we first took a look at the playground sketch we all thought it was really cool because it had a number of the ideas that we all came up with on the plan like a climbing wall and the stepping stones but when we looked more closely at the playground plan we saw that it didn't include some of our other ideas like monkey bars and a fruit/veg patch like the one that we have up by the top field.

Purple Cake Day

Purple Cake Day was a huge success!! In total we raised a whopping $1043!
Everyone looked fantastic in their purple. Some students made a wearable art
and got to display their costume in a special parade. After that we all danced to some groovy songs, everyone got really into the dancing. The Seniors iced the cupcakes and I can tell you they looked amazing! At morning tea everyone enjoyed
munching on their cupcakes.

By James

We had many cupcakes left over so three of the students helped to sell the
cakes outside Nelson New World! We sold most of them and learnt some valuable lessons in the process! One of the most important lessons being 'don't judge
a book by the cover'. Most people were great, unfortunately some a little rude! We decided it didn't take much to stop and say 'no thank you!' - a much better response
than just walking right past. Many people were very generous and were happy to give a donation without a cupcake. It was also interesting how many people hadn't heard of 'purple cake day', once we had told them a little about how it came to be they were more than happy to buy a cupcake - Good on you Nelson!!

All in all it was a lot of fun and all for a very good cause - a big thank you
to everyone that pitched in to help out!!

Sculpture Coming to Enner Glynn

The Art group has been designing a sculpture for the school. We have been talking to our artist, and drawing pictures to be made out of steel for it. We have LOTS of design ideas, mostly kids playing sports or music. Our ideas are all based around the school learning lenses - being, uniting, understanding, growing and belonging! We have been looking at library books for some simple ideas for designs. It is really fun helping to design a sculpture for the school. We have had lots of great ideas but now we've chosen one and are working on it. We can't wait until it is finished!

Samantha

Scenario Number Three

Here's a riddle for you -
It has no shape, colour or smell, and when pure, no taste either. We see right through it and often hardly notice it.
What is it?


In F.P.S (Future Problem Solving) we have started a whole new problem. Our new problem is the future worldwide water crisis, we researched a bit and learnt some amazing facts. Did you know that about 10 million people die every year from diseases carried in rancid (dirty) drinking water. If you put all the world's water into a bucket only 1 teaspoon would be drinkable. The amount of water we use to make something is called 'embedded' water, here are some examples:
* 1 T-shirt = 4000 L of water
* Pair of leather = 8000 L
* Slice Bread = 40 L
* Car = 400,000 L
* Sheet of Paper = 1O L

Two-thirds of people live in areas of the world that have only a quarter of the world's rain.

To have fun with our research we are in teams, each team has created a country and we will have skirmishes each week to earn
a percentage of the global water!

We will keep posting interesting facts as we learn them!

Depletion of Ocean Species

Today the REACH FPS group celebrated posting off their second workbook. This was the depletion of ocean species scenario.
It was a scenario about the how our oceans are becoming overfished and looked at a future fishing scenario. Imagine a hotel on the sea where you pay a lot of money to stay but are guaranteed to catch a fish - not just any fish but a genetically altered fish!!!
A closer look at this raised some concern! - We had to think of 10 challenges, some of ours were-
The sonic stunners (a new method of fishing) may not stun just the fish targeted. This may be a problem because they might threaten sea creatures that man hasn't even found yet, this may unbalance the food chain and further deplete the oceanic species. Because Ikanui is a recreational facility it doesn't address the real problem of commercial fishing methods such as bottom trawling
long-lining ect. this is a problem as Ikanui may actually be supporting the commercial fishing methods to feed their fish bycatch
(unwanted fish) which is a byproduct of these methods.
ect. ect. we worked hard and when we finally achieved our goal (today) we got another bowl of popcorn! YUMMY! we are proud of what we have accomplished and a small group of us wish to go further and educate the general public. By the FPS group ;)

HOW YOU CAN HELP OUR NZ BIRDS

We are worried that our New Zealand Native birds are under threat, they are under threat because:
*there are lots of rats and mice.
*stoats that kill for the sake of killing.
*possums eat the leaves,buds,flowers and even bark of native trees, this mens less food for native birds.
*cats come out at night and hunt the native birds.

We need to help before it's too late!!
How you can help:
*keep your cat in at night.
*put a bell on your cats collar.
*help make traps.
*make bird feeders and put them in your garden.
*help with bird monitoring- you can go on the Waimarama Sancturary website to find out more about this.
*tell people about this problem - the more people that are informed the better!

Lets keep our birds safe!!

by Aimee

Brook Sanctuary Field Trip

On Monday the 13th June the REACH Inquiry groups 1 and 2 drove to the Waimarama Brook Sanctuary. We wanted to find out more about our native birds, the situation they are in and what is being done here in Nelson to help them. Rick the project manager talked to us about the pests here in Nelson. Possums, stoats, weasels, ferrel cats, rats and mice are eating our native birds and their eggs, last year alone 26 million native birds were killed in NZ by these pests. Stoats which were bought over from Europe are not a pest there because they have natural predators to keep their numbers down, however in NZ the stoat really does not have any predators. They were bought to NZ to try to decrease the number of rabbits and hares as they were a problem for farmers. Rick showed us how the different traps work, the problem with trapping though is that the volunteers have to keep setting them and that they are only set over 200 of the 715 hectare sanctuary. Eggs are used as bait, the eggs are kindly donated by Ewings poultry as the stoats will only eat fresh eggs. The traps must work in a way that will mean the pest dies instantly. Sometimes Picks peanut butter is used on traps, this is also donated by Picks. You can help by supporting these two local companies by buying Picks peanut butter and Ewings eggs. Poisons can also be used but the native birds can also eat it.
Rick then took us to see a sample section of the pest proof fence they are planning on putting up. The fence is a better option because
*this is the only way the pests can be completely removed.
*it will enclose the whole 715 hectares of the sanctuary.
*Poisons will not need to be used.
We all went for a 45minute walk, looked for traps and listened to the birds. We were lucky enough to see a falcon soaring above us, fantails, pigeons, tui and bellbirds.
We also saw a frozen opossum, they are frozen once trapped so that their fur can be used for clothing.
We had a great morning, learnt lots and now have many ideas of how we can help. Next week we will blog our ideas of what we are going to do to help and how you can help to.!!!