Robyn Gamble brought a group of Busy Bodies to the nursery on Thursday 22 November and I am pleased to say the weather had much improved. We had a leisurely walk through the orchard and veggie gardens and then explored the worm farm made out of an old bath. The children marvelled at these little recyclers chomping their way through the veggie scraps, and had fun gently holding them. After putting them back into the dark we went straight down to the pond area – Donna the resident duck was there, and we looked at the pondlife that had been caught in the trap. The smell from the cabbage tree flowers was very strong and tui’s were taking nectar from the flax flowers. In the Nature Centre the children enjoyed the wetland tunnel and learning about insects by doing the big butterfly and weta jigsaws
Chris
Posted: 26 November 2018
“We’ll be coming rain or shine” said Wendy McLachlan head teacher of Lindisfarne Kindergarten. So we knew they would be well prepared for the Southland weather on Tuesday – and it was indeed cold, wet and wild! But after walking through the orchard, exploring the Nature Centre and having morning tea we all headed out to do a scavenger hunt around the pond using our senses – eyes, touch, hearing and smell. We were also lucky that at the pond there were some interesting critters caught in the nets – dragonfly larvae, backswimmers, beetles and koura to name a few. We took the pond creatures back to the Nature Centre for a closer look and did some of the big floor jigsaws as well as more exploring in the wetland tunnel and a kiwi song with actions. The group closed by singing a lovely Waiata to Bronwyn and Chris.
Chris
Posted: 26 November 2018
Windsor Brownies visited the Southland Community Nursery to learn about insects, gardening and birds. A quick look at the orchard and the vegetable gardens and the associated companion planting, talking about the importance of bees and other insect pollinators was followed by the ‘ooohs’ and ‘yucks’ looking at the worms in the worm farm. What a great job the worms do to help us with our gardening though! We then potted up some coriander seedlings and talked about what kind of plants can be planted in a garden, what some of the plants are that the girls plant at home (if any) and what care is needed for growing plants.
Bronwyn
Posted: 26 November 2018
We did have doubts about holding the Eco-Fun day on the morning we were setting up. But, a lot of work and publicity goes into the organising so we went ahead regardless of the awful weather forecast! Setting up in the morning saw Geoff and Cathy get caught in squally rain but after that things improved. A hardy group of 11 children, their 12 adults and our 9 helpers made for a happy fun-filled afternoon. Activities included identifying animal pests and insects (in the Education Centre!), pond dipping (for critters), boat-building from natural materials, scavenger hunt and plant bingo, planting and measuring a native tree (some previous plants are now over 2 metres tall!) and generally enjoying being outside on a day of very wild weather! Thanks to all who helped and all who came along.
Chris and Bronwyn
Posted: 8 November 2018
Fifty-eight students from St Johns Girls School, two teachers and ten parents came to the Community Nursery on Tuesday 30th October 2018.
The brief from the school was “the food that we eat” – so we devised three different activities to divide the large group into three manageable activity groups. The activities were
- Foraging for wild food (with Chris and Maggie)
- Maori traditional uses for native plants (with Bronwyn)
- Growing vegetables, herbs and companion planting (with Lesley and Lidia)
Each group of children did each of the activities led by our nursery volunteers. Lesley and Lidia led groups around the vegetable garden seeing which vegetables grow well in Southland. They also went into the tunnelhouse where we can grow tomatoes, courgettes and chilly peppers and basil as they need more heat than a Southland summer! Another activity was potting up seedlings of the herb lovage and companion plant French marigold and sowing runner bean seeds – all to take back to school to grow. Maggie and Chris went into the orchard to do some foraging – where some children (with prior permission) tasted some of the plants. The key to foraging is never to eat something you don’t know so the catchphrase “If in doubt, leave it out” was used to reinforce that message. Some of the foraged plants included miner’s lettuce, marigold flowers, rocket flowers and a range of other herbs found growing wild. The nut trees, fruit trees and berry bushes were also talked about as we went past.
Bronwyn’s group walked around the pond track and talked about the importance of identifying anything you eat from the bush - if you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it. We did identify and taste some NZ natives :
- sucking the nectar out of the kotukutuku (tree fuchsia) and talking about the berries. We identified this through its flower, bark and distinctive two coloured leaf.
- Horopito or pepper tree, slowly licking then chewing to get hot tips of tongues and lips!
- makomako (or wineberry) looking at the distinctive shark toothed edged leaf and how the berries can be eaten
- the tangly divaricating mingimingi tree and a picture of their little blue berries that can be eaten
- the cabbage tree and how the shoots can be eaten.
We also talked about how to treat fungi in the bush and that there are a number of poisonous berries and parts of plants that we should not eat.
It was a pleasure having such an enthusiastic group at the Nursery.
Chris and Bronwyn
Posted: 8 November 2018
