Term 4 – A Term Full of Rewards

After the school holidays in October, we returned to a garden bursting with produce!
It felt like stepping into a market as we filled our baskets with the freshest vegetables, picked straight from the soil. What a joy to see so much delicious harvest ! All the produce was shared fairly among the tamariki, who took it home to share with their families.

We also started planting our spring and summer vegetables. Keeping it simple, we focused on crops that can handle the heat, as we’re expecting a hot and dry summer. Corn, pumpkins, courgettes, and kūmara were our choices. Fingers crossed that when we return after the long holidays, we’ll find an abundance of produce once again!

One fun activity this term was baking cakes for Grandparents’ Day. Not just one cake—we made another for the tamariki to share too! With the recent addition of a lemon tree, it was the perfect opportunity to explore how versatile lemons can be.
The baking session offered so much to learn—measuring, weighing, adding ingredients—and once the cakes were in the oven, we headed to the garden to gather edible flowers for decoration. There were so many flowers to choose from! The tamariki had great fun making the cakes look beautiful. The younger class got involved too, creating something special for their grandparents. They picked lovely bunches of flowers to place in glass jars for table decorations.

As spring has been very dry, we’ve been busy watering the fruit trees. Now three years old, these trees were planted alongside blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb, and passionfruit. For the first time, the trees are producing an abundance of fruit. I’m so proud and happy that we planted such a variety of perennial fruits. Over the years, these will continue to provide for us, season after season. I can’t wait to see the tamariki picking fruit straight from the trees—a wonderful way to learn where food comes from, rather than only seeing it in the supermarket.

With the younger tamariki, we harvested potatoes that we planted in Term Three. Their happy faces lit up the garden as they counted again and again how many potatoes they’d found. They took them back to the classroom to show their classmates and teachers.

I’ve received such lovely Christmas cards from the tamariki, and some even surprised me by secretly placing them on my garden bag. They’ve drawn such wonderful garden-related pictures and written such lovely phrases. If this is how a child sees their time with me in the garden, it’s the biggest praise I could receive. I feel very humbled.

On our final day of the term, I surprised the Year Six tamariki with ice blocks, as it was my last day with them before they move on to their next journey. It’s hard to believe how much they’ve grown over the three years we’ve spent together in the garden. They will be sorely missed. An action-packed year has come to an end, and we can’t wait to see what surprises 2025 will bring!