Curiosity and Growth at Paengaroa School

Paengaroa School joined our PiPS family in Term 4, 2024. Paengaroa already had community gardens set up at the school, but they hadn’t been used in quite a while and were overgrown with weeds.

With a new outdoor classroom shelter having been built, it was time to introduce the tamaraki to the new PiPS programme. For this first term we have been introducing all the children of Paengaroa School to the garden with the five junior classrooms one week and the five senior classrooms the alternative weeks.

We have covered so much this term and had such a lovely transformation in the garden, here are some of our highlights below:

The garden beds were really overgrown so we all needed to get stuck in and weed, the kids were so curious and loved finding different insects in the garden.

Learning about seed germination, and what plants need to grow. We started by making some seed raising mix with equal parts coconut coir, sieved compost and fine pumice sand. The kids said it was like mixing a big cake. It was special to all hold different seeds and remember that this seed is a baby that will grow into food for us, but first needs some love, care and attention. We planted a big variety of seeds.

We planted strawberries and learnt about roots and how to dig a hole deep enough so that all the roots are covered and happy in their new home.

 Planting potatoes was a hit, first the kids had to work together to add compost to the garden. Look at the growth below of room 6’s row of potatoes they planted.

 Transplanting our seedlings to grow into bigger plants before we planted them in the garden.

The only thing growing in the garden when we first started this term was a lot of rhubarb so we harvested it, talked about NOT eating the leaf, and the kiddies had turns cutting it up and cooking it. We ate it with a bit of crumble topping and the kids whipped some cream. For most children this was something new, and there was lots of adventurous kiddies trying something different.

Bruce, the principal, and caretaker Glen helped build a bean arch and the tamariki enjoyed planting bean seeds and watching them grow up the arch.

Planting out all our baby seedlings was a much-anticipated job as we checked in on the growth each week as they grew from seed.

Learning how to care for our plants once they are in the garden was also an important job, learning about the different minerals plants need and how we can help them with fertilising. We made our own weed tea for fertiliser, and it got pretty stinky!

Built and painted a pataka kai and made labels for the garden.

We did a range of other jobs from cardboarding and mulching around our fruit trees and paths. Learning about companion planting, what is in our soil and how to look after it, and also made a scarecrow called Kevin.

We all had a fun term; the Tamariki are excited to come back after the holidays to see what the garden will look like. We finished the year making our favourite vegetable decoration with the junior classrooms too!