Term 3 2010 Adopt a Park Tree Planting

We have been working with Robynne Sutton who is a Park Ranger with the Manukau City Council. She spoke to us about all the parks the Council looks after and suggested ways people can use the parks and become involved in looking after them. Volunteers are always needed to help sustain the lovely parks in our area.

Plantings at the Stream

We explored the stream early on to see the trees and bushes that had been planted. Much of the stream is shaded which is necessary for the health of the water. Macroinvertebrates cannot survive in really warm water.
There are many willow trees by the stream and quite a lot of bamboo at the north end of the Reserve but there are some native plantings.
We saw that the flax plants that some students in our group had planted when they were in year 2 had grown very tall!

Flax and willow

 

Willow

 Bamboo

Term 3 2010 Adopt a Park Clean Up Time- Photo Essay

Trip to Totara Park- Comparing Sites

In mid term 2 we went to Totara Park to compare our stream.  We measured the things like the clarity and it was cleaner than our stream but they had scummy film on the top of the water which we had not seen at our stream. We discovered some micro-invertabrates there but they were mostly the same as the micro-invertabrates we found at our stream. The environment was different because they had more shade from trees, these trees were actually native to NZ.  The temperature felt cooler but we don't have many trees at our stream. At the end of the trip both streams were the same in invertebrates. (R.K.)

Photos Term 2 2010- Learning How to Test Water and Identify Invertebrates

We are learning to identify macro-invertabrates

Learning the different sections of the macro-invertebrates 

This is the water clarity sheet

This is a picture of us meacuring the clarity when we were down at the stream

This is the flax (Harakeke) that some of us planted in Year 2

This is when Julia told us where to find the macro-invertebrates

 This is a picture of us down the stream next to the bank.

This is a picture of the tray where we find the macro-invertebrates

This is our gear for finding the macro-invertebrates and for measuring the stream.

Here we are taking measurements and finding macro-invertebrates down by the stream

                                            

This is the macro-invertebrates chart which we use to identify the creatures we find in the stream.

After we identify the macro-invertebrates that we have found, we organize them into their places in here according to the chart

We learned about water temperature. Macro-invertebrates need cool water to thrive.

Welcome to our blog

We are a group of Year 6 students at EPS. We have been  working together as a group since Term 2. In our Enrichment group we got to choose our own topic to investigate. We meet every Friday at our school for an hour and a half.

Our goal in term 2 was to study our stream and its inhabitants, record measurements and monitor the quality of the water. We went to Totara Park in term 2 so we could compare our stream to another that we thought that may have better quality water.  We were studiying invertibrates because we found out that they were a good indicator to tell how polluted or clean the water in the stream was.

As term 3 came around we realised that as part of our stream's health we had to expand our thoughts to the reserve surrouding the stream. A Manukau City Council Parks ranger offered us the amazing oppertunity to adopt a park. So we jumped at the chance!

Some areas beside the stream really shocked us. One of the first things we saw was...a porcelain toilet on the bank of our stream.  Ewwwww! Because of this we decided to make it our responsibility to clean up at least a little of the rubbish littered around our recycling bin.

Week 10 Term 3 2010 Clean Up NZ Week