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A group of students expressed an interest in beginning a Garden Club at the local organic gardens owned by Chris & Anna. Every Friday afternoon, the students worked with Chris or Anna to establish, maintain and harvest vegetables on a piece if land set aside especially for them.

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Year 3-5 buried a variety of waste items like chippie packets, banana skins, smelly socks and lunch wrap.
They wanted to find out which rubbish decomposed quickest and which was slowest. They marked the spots with stakes. Each day they moistened the ground. They then waited one month and then dug all the rubbish up.

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2008 Linkwater School's first envirogroup

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2008 Linkwater School's first envirogroup

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L.E.G.S
Linkwater Envirogroup Students
India, Tom, Jack, Tiare, Sophia, Annika, Louise, Trent , Jana
They started by creating a vision map draft and creating icons, The started making the start of the river showing everything they have done.

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The Juniors used newspaper strips and a little wooden roller to shape their own pots. Then they filled the pots with potting mix and used spoons from the staff room as little spades. They then planted sunflower seeds and cucumber seedlings. And then they took them home and watched them start to grow

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Glenn and Keith organised to clear the garden space abd unload the wood. They were joined by the Outward Bound Group and instructor Darin, as part of their community service. Everyone wanted to help but some people got dirtier than others. The garden boxes were soon filled with layers of newspaper, straw, peastraw and compost. All ready for planting!

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2009

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this is when the school orchard got planted they planted a plum tree, fejoa trees and a lemon tree and put irrigation under the ground!

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As part of their community service, an Outward Bound watch came and helped to dig the border of the new bike track.

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2012

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Senior Room Inquiry - Polluted/Healthy sea Mosaic

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Senior Room Inquiry - Polluted/Healthy sea Mosaic

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In 2016 the Seniors spent ages designing a Mosaic to put on the side of our pool but they wanted their Mosaic to have a important meaning, so they desided to make it so one side was a heathly sea and the other side a polluted sea.

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The middle room students decided to make a living hut out of willow. The planning stage took ages because we had to work out where to put the hut and how many willow sticks we would need. We decided to make it behind the senior room and next to the snadpit.

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We created an Enviroschools Guiding Principles ladder

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We created an Enviroschools Guiding Principles ladder

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Chloe designed and built this sculpture and gifted it to the school as her leaver's gift in 2017. It has the names of the Year 8 leavers on it.

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2015

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The New Zealand Army and Outward Bound came to repair the bike track and put obstacles and berms on the bike track. It is good to work with other community members when the job gets too big for us.

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For Skye's year 8 challenge she gave the school some silks she gave them to us to put on a tree so we could play with it in summer time.

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Year 8 challenge mural made by mika Boniface in 2017. this improves our mauri because it was made by a child at our school with only a bit of adult help. it shows our environment , and what we live in.

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Scarlett and Trinity made a keyboard swing for an inquiry project because they were learning about recycling so they used an old computer keyboard as the swing seat.

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 Pip and Leon's Mustelid trapping program 2018

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 Pip and Leon's Mustelid trapping program 2018

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Leon and Pip researched then set up a stoat  trapping program around the school to save our native birds. So far we have caught a few rats and mice.

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2019

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In 2019 a student named Aria Millen made a small library for her year eight challange for the community to bring and take books. It was made to reuse old books and can be found at the front of the school.

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March 2019

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The Junior Room received some rice seeds from a Japanese grower in Northland. We grew our rice in a flooded mussel float outside but later moved the float into the tunnel house. We harvested the rice but it was very hard to thresh and husk, so there was not much produced to eat.

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In 2020 two students named Dan Shaw and Angus Howe had a inquiry of cleaning up our bee garden, which meant trimming the bushes, fixing the sign and cleaning up the paths. Now the bees have fresh water and beautiful flowers to enjoy.

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Sustainable Coastlines, Double Bay clean up 2020

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Sustainable Coastlines, Double Bay clean up 2020

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In 2019 we started to do Sustainable Coastlines.
Ben who works for Sustainable Coastlines came and taught us about how to do a beach clean up. Our beach to monitor is Double Bay in the Mahau Sound. We monitor the bay 4 times a year and report the date to Litter Intelligence

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In early 2021 all of Linkwater School walked along to the Morrison farm to help plant 3,000 native trees. The Morrisons are replanting an area of their farm that is alongside a waterway in an effort to improve the environment and provide a habitat for native birds and animals.

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Bay of Mystery tour, Queen Charlotte Sound 2021

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Bay of Mystery tour, Queen Charlotte Sound 2021

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One Thursday the year 1-6 went on a  boat tour tour down the queen
Charlotte sounds to Awrapara island and Blumine island.  We learned some history about the area. We visited the World War 2 gun emplacements on Blumine Island and also learnt about the native birds on the island.

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The Jolly Juniors spent time researching all about different herbs. We did blind tastings, used some herbs in cooking and learnt what each plant looked like. We had a vote to decide the best way to set up the wood borders. To prepare the garden bed, we added more soil, potting mix, leaf mulch, cardboard and fertiliser. Then we each planted our favourite herb plant.

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Lions District 2021 Youth Environment Award Competition

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Lions District 2021 Youth Environment Award Competition

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Here is our entry for this years Environment award showcasing all of the hard work we have done.

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Bread Tags for Wheelchairs.

At Linkwater School we have managed to collect a huge number of Breadtags for this wonderful cause. Great work Team! It is incredible to think that such a tiny thing can make a difference. We integrated the learning into many areas including weight and volume measurement.

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Here is a link with more information about this project.

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Navigation for News Categories

New Zealand's plastic bread tags are now being sold for recycling to fund wheelchairs for those in need in South Africa.

Bread tags Photo: Supplied

The Bread Tags For Wheelchairs scheme has been running in South Africa since 2006 and was started in New Zealand in February.

In South Africa the bread tags are sold to a plastics company which makes seedlings trays, and the funds are used to purchase wheelchairs for those in need.

Kelly Vollenhoven, from Whangārei, heard about the scheme while she was living in Cape Town and she now co-ordinates the scheme in New Zealand.

She said it was clear that many people had been stockpiling the small plastic tags for some time.

"We had one delivery come in with a wee post-it note attached stuck on to it saying, 'I have been waiting ten years for something like this to happen.'

"So they were really pleased they could do something worthy with their tags."

A thankful note left with a small hoard of bread tags delivered to the charity. Photo: Supplied

She said they were sending the New Zealand tags to the South African plastics company for recycling, but she was looking for a local company which could process them.

Mrs Vollenhoven, who lived in Cape Town for three years, is getting the tags to South Africa by asking people to carry them when they are heading to South Africa.

A group of Keas - an offshoot of Scouts - collects the bread tags for the charity Photo: Supplied

She said local plastic recycling companies had so far indicated they wanted to take in tonnes of recyclables, not the kilos which she could currently supply.

There are currently 80 public collections spots around the country, and more information about the New Zealand scheme can be found on their Facebook page Bread tags for wheelchairs NZ.

The money raised from the tags from New Zealand will continue to help purchase wheelchairs for people in South Africa.

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Bread Tags for Wheelchairs charity launches in New Zealand

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New Zealand’s plastic bread tags are now being sold for recycling to fund wheelchairs for those in need in South Africa.

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A small team from our Envirogroup visited the Picton Recovery Center to take the bread tags in. We had a good look around and noted the different things we could be recycling and bringing here. Wine bottle tops, toothpaste products, dish and air care products.

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Linkwater school took part in an Enviroschools Zui with other Marlborough schools and following this completed a jamboard with ideas of what they want to do next.

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A super day selling our beeswax wraps at the spring Fair! We made over $100! Thank you to Sherrington Honey for the donations of wax and fabric.

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Steadfast trip to Kaipupu point - December 2022

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Steadfast trip to Kaipupu point - December 2022

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Our whole school joined the Steadfast and sailed around to Kaipupu Point. We met Anna who told us all about the pests they are keeping out and the big fence that stops them. We walked around the sanctuary and looked at the beautiful flora and fauna. On the way home we looked at the biodiversity in the water with water samples and a microscope.

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Making fishing traditional nets from Harakeke.

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What a fabulous day we all had at Anakiwa for our Whakawhanaungatanga day last Friday. It was a wonderful opportunity  to catch up with everyone, get to know each other a little more, and  learn alongside each other.

Richard de Hamel taught our tamariki about the early Māori waka and then allowed them to float the waka in the sea. We all had a go at making a traditional fishing net and joined them all up into one big net.

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We had a very successful day judging the nude food although it was really hard to pick first place for each group because so many people made a huge effort and did really well. We had 3 people on our judging panel away so we managed to zoom into Chloe and Ace to be part of the judging. All lunch boxes were marked anonymously so it was fair. The first, second and third place winners for each class will be announced at our assembly on Thursday. Well done everyone for taking part, and we hope you keep up the good work looking after our environment.

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Nikau were very fortunate to have a visit from Lewis Smith from Ngāti Kuia.  He talked to the children about the early Māori in this area and how they fashioned pakohe (argillite) to make adzes.  Ask a Nikau student what metasomatised means!

They were fortunate to then be presented with a piece of pakohe that they sanded . . . . and sanded . . . . and sanded into a beautiful taonga to be worn around their neck.  They started with 120 grit sandpaper and went up to 1000 grit to make a polished surface.  It took a lot of work!

In the old days, it would take them up to 200 hours (2 months of solid school time) to sand down a polished adze!

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We have been busy making upcylcled tins for pencil holders and plant pots ready to sell at the Spring Fair.

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The library has had an upgrade so the Enviro group are busy relocating our information.

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Our wall display timeline is having trouble staying stuck! We are carefully collating the information and we are going to display it in another format. It has been really fun looking back at old photos.