Tuning in for our inquiry

To move our inquiry along we spent the day at the Zoo participating in our Bush Builder Workshops.  There was lots to see and do and we were very excited!

Our first workshop helped us uncover how everything is interconnected.  In our buddies we had to pick an insect, animal, tree, leaves or water.  The web started with an animal and connected to something else in the circle that it needed to survive.  We hopped back and forth between owls, insects, trees, and water.  We also saw what happens when 1 thing in the web goes away.  We took away all the trees and the whole web fell apart.  

Next we had some time to explore.

After that we moved on to a mindful nature walk.  We had to guide our buddies through the bush without stepping on anything.  We had to take our time, look where we were going and walk carefully.

Our 4th rotation was when we got to be bug finders! We had magnifying glasses, cups and bugnoculars and we got searching around for bugs. 

Then we all got to pet a real Tuatara.  She was a still a baby Tuatara at only 13 years old.

Then we got to go and explore the zoo!

Lions and Ostrich and Dragon Oh My!

Overall the trip was a huge success.  We got to do some exploring and began to think about our environment around us and what lives there.  

A huge thank you to all the help we had from parents and grandparents and caregivers!

Kaitiaki o te Ngahere

Our inquiry started off by looking at the idea of Manaakitanga and how we can look after each other and our own wellbeing and we are now beginning to look at how we can be Kaitiaki, or guardians, of our school and our environment.  

We have become an Enviroschool and have also teamed up with the Zoo to be part of the Bush builders club.  

Some of the Big Questions that we'll be unpacking and exploring are:

• What are our responsibilities ?
• How do little actions make a difference?
• How can innovation improve our environment?

To start us off one thing we did was go around our school grounds to observe and think like scientists. The question was "What is around us?" and our task was to observe and draw all the things around us in our school grounds.

Here are our ideas and what we noticed:

You can see that we did notice some of the environmental aspects around us like some grass and trees and a few little birds. We are going to do this exercise again after spending time learning more about our environment to see if we begin to notice more of what is around us. Stay tuned for more around this inquiry!