Education and Volunteer Lead/Coordinator
This autumn and winter has seen hundreds more tamariki from around the Bay of Islands venture out to the islands of Ipipiri, as part of our Floating Classroom educational programme.
Over the season, Year 5 and 6 students from 9 schools so far, with one more to go, have had the chance to experience the regenerating ecosystems of Ipipiri, spot rare birdlife, and have a hands on introduction to protecting our native flora and fauna.
We saw a busy array of birdlife on many of the trips, students doing a haka on the beach, beautiful waiata, one of the kids found a Pacific island seed washed up on the beach, and we were blown away by some impressive post-visit work following the island days, including this fantastic article written by one young learner with Kerikeri Home School group.
The comprehensive learning experience begins in the classroom, with our educators introducing Project Island Song, and explaining key concepts to set the scene. On island day, the students take the boat out to Moturua, where they begin with a nature-spotting walk through the bush, before getting hands-on working out how to assemble their own rat traps to take home, use at school, or share with a local community organisation. Using their learning from the island day, students then are supported to pursue projects inspired by their experience back at school, which they then present to our educators.
Click through the gallery below to learn more about the programme, and see how it all went this year!
Our Floating Classrooms are made possible by the generous funding from the Joyce Fisher Charitable Trust, which ensures there is no cost to the schools or students.
Alongside this funding many local groups kindly supported this year’s Floating Classrooms. The team at Kerikeri Mens Shed prepared the rat traps in kitset form for the students. Murry and the team at Bay of Islands ITM generously donated all the materials for the rat traps.
Island Getaway provided a discounted charter rate for the day to enable the students to get to the islands, and we couldn’t do it without their amazing crew onboard this year’s Floating Classrooms – Hamish, Bluebell, Zac, Nick and TJ.
Our skilled conservation dog handlers and their dogs completed biosecurity checks when they were available to meet with some lucky schools:
Finally, many thanks also to the teachers, parents and students that took part this year!
