Nature Smart 

2014
The Nature Smart team has 23 dedicated members who are advocates and protectors of Planet Earth. Scroll down to see photos of what we have been up to recently. 

Our main goals for 2014 are: 

• to reduce rubbish in the school and our community
  
• to promote the efficient use of energy throughout the school
• to learn all about the endangered species of New Zealand and throughout the world.
• to raise awareness in our school and community of global environmental events.

Goal 1: Reducing Rubbish in Our School and Community

We are working hard to prevent rubbish from ending up in our precious ocean or the landfill by:

• encouraging children to put all their lunch rubbish back into their lunch box and then when they get home to place it in the appropriate bins.
  
• promoting the use of rubbish free lunch boxes
• completing beach clean ups at least twice a term 
  
• raising awareness in the school and community of World Wide Environmental Events like Earth Hour. 
  
• showing our Did You Know Series: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle at school assemblies
• announcing the classroom winners of the Green Choice Award at every assembly.
• being involved in the Starship School Phone Swap.

Plastic Sand
Did you know that our sand at Sumner Beach is full of plastic? (See picture). These little balls of plastic are called Mermaid Tears. We are going to investigate how they washed up on our beach and what we can do to stop it and keep our beach beautiful!

Did You Know Series: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle 
Click on the arrows to watch our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle presentation. How many questions did you get right? 

Starship School Phone Swap
Every old mobile that is recycled helps to prevent hazardous, toxic substances from entering our precious environment. This is why we are involved in the Starship School Phone Swap as well as helping a good cause!

This is how it works.

• We advertise for mobile phones in every newsletter.
  
• Children bring old cell-phones into school.
  
• We send these phones to Starship who then assess, grade and cleanse the data from each phone.
  
• Working phones are shipped to Hong Kong where they are refurbished and on-sold into emerging markets
  
• Non-working phones are recycled in line with environmental best practice.
  
• Profits go to the Starship Foundation to support the Starship National Air Ambulance Service
  

So please help us to help the environment and support Starship by bringing in any old cell-phones.
 Click here to go to the Starship website.

No. of phones we have collected and given to Starship so far for 2014

Goal 2: Promoting the Efficient Use of Energy Throughout Our School

We are investigating ways in which we can save energy and promote energy efficiency at Sumner.


Solar Panels
We are learning all about generating electricity from renewable sources, in particular, solar power. This involves participating in a programme developed by Genesis Energy called Schoolgen. Through this we will look at how we can use energy more efficiently in our school. The Schoolgen website gives us lots of data on the solar panels in our school as well as lots of information on solar power. 

There are three other schools in the South Island that also have Solar Panels installed by Genesis Energy. The schools are Banks Ave, Middleton Grange Primary and a wee school in Tekapo. 



Power of 10
This year we introduced the Power of 10 Challenge. The idea was to encourage each classroom to turn off their lights for 10 minutes each day. However this has become very competitive and many classrooms have been turning their lights off for more than 10 minutes! Some classes have been switching their lights off for the whole day! We can't wait to see if this has made a difference to our energy bill! The amount of power saved by a class goes towards winning the Green Choice Award.

How much electricity are our Solar Panels generating?

Click on the graph to check out how many kWh of electricity has been generated by our Solar Panels and how much CO2 saved

Did You Know Series: Saving Energy
We created a Did You Know Series on saving energy and we show this at school assemblies. Click play to watch. How many questions did you get right? 

The Green Choice Award

The Green Choice Award is a Nature Smart initiative to promote recycling and energy efficiency throughout the school. 

Nature Smart members complete classroom checks to ensure that:

• only flat paper is being placed in the recycling bins.
  
• only pencil shavings and tissues are being placed in the classroom rubbish bins
  
• the classroom is doing its best to conserve energy.
  

Winning classrooms are announced at each assembly. At the end of each term the overall winning classrooms are awarded a mufti-day and at the end of the year, the Green Choice Award, made by the Nature Smart team on the 3D printer.


Click on the graphs below to see which classrooms are winning.

Goal 3: Learning about Endangered Animals

Canterbury's White-Flippered Penguin
The White-flippered penguin is one of the smallest and most endangered penguins in the world. It is endemic to Canterbury, New Zealand, breeding only on Banks Peninsula and Motunau Island. We are going to work closely with Lincoln University to find out how we can help this little penguin. 

Click on the picture to find out more about the White-Flippered Penguin.

Goal 4: Raising Awareness of World Wide Environmental Events

Environmental Issues in the News
There are many environmental issues that make the headlines both locally and globally. We are going to be keeping updated with what's happening and the issues we face.

Click on the 'The New Zealand Herald' icon to find out the latest news.

Edmodo
Edmodo provides a safe and easy way for us to connect and collaborate with each other, share content with our peers and access resources used in class. It also provides a place to store our work to share with our parents at home. Click on the edmodo icon to go to this website.

Recent Photos