Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Gore Main School Envirogroup!  We have worked extremely hard over 2012 and achieved many great things!  We now say goodbye to some of our older Envirogroup members and will welcome some new ones next year! 

Merry Christmas!  Tune in to see what we are up to next year!

Mural

During Term 3 the Envirogroup decided it was time to beautify our grounds some more.  Ou grounds are a little boring and we thought that we could jazz them up a little.  We decided to paint a mural!  We chose the fence that surrounds the rubbish skip which makes this area look tidier..  We also want visitors to know that we are a happy friendly school and our mural represents this.  Check out the photographic diary to show how we went about the process...

First.... we designed templates that could be put on the fence and traced around..

Next... we nailed the templates up and traced around them!

Tracing and painting around templates

Yes... the clouds look great up there!

Tracing around a flower template

Great painting girls!

This is a very good ladybird!

The mural starting to take shape

Beginning to add colour!  Awesome!

Lots of colour added!

The mural... nearly finished (December 2012)

 

Raised Garden Bed

Term 3 was an eventful term for the Gore Main School Envirogroup.  On our vision map we indicated that we wanted a new 'raised garden' because the old garden was damp and the soil was hard to work.  After our garden had been robbed we felt discouraged with the old plot and we wanted a fresh new one!  So... we built 2 new raised garden beds!  Wahoo!  Our school community was behind the project 100%.  The timber for the project was completely donated by a Gore Main School family.  We had a group of helpers that worked together to plan and build the garden.  Once the timber framing was constructed the Envirogroup worked hard to fill the plots, firstly with gravel, topsoil and then nutrient rich fertilizer!  Once the plots were fill of soil each classroom at Gore Main School was given a vegetable to look after, for example Room 1 (carrots) and Room 2 (radishes).  This involved every classroom and child at the school and children have been popping down to the gardens to check on their plants.  Some children in the school decided to take on the 'duty' of ensuring that the plants had ample water.  The raised gardens have been very successful and the children are enjoying seeing things grow and being a part of the process.  The gardens have been an integral part of the curriculum over the last few terms, for example classes writing instructions on how to prepare radishes.   

"Where have all the helpers gone?"

 

Building the raised garden bed early on Sunday morning.

Pickup... the thick plank!

The raised gardens taking shape

Filling the gardens with gravel for a base

Loading gravel!

Gravel base

Truck bringing topsoil in...

Tipping off topsoil for raised garden

5 tonne of dirt!  Someone has to move that into the raised garden...

Meet the dirt movers....

Moving dirt....

And still moving dirt....

Still moving dirt.... roping in a teacher to help!

Our beautifu raised garden... full of vegetables (December 2012)

Our garden.... each classroom is helping and taking responsibility for an area in the garden!  Awesome!

  

Gore Main School Orchard

During Term 3 2012 we were lucky enough to have 6 different fruit trees donated to our school!  We now have our own school 'orchard'.  We are so thankful to the family who donated these amazing specimen trees and we look forward to the years of teaching and learning around these.  In the future we can learn many things based around the fruit trees, like pruning, fertilizing, pollination, harvesting, food processes (bottling, stewing etc) and production.  The fruit trees we now have growing are:  Apples, Peaches, Nectarines, Plums and Apricots!  Wow!  We look forward to seeing how they progress!

Check out our beautiful new orchard! 

Healthy fruit tree!  We can't wait till it bears fruit!