As a Waterwise School, we encourage all our families to participate in Seek a Leak Week. This activity can be done at home.
As part of our Seek a Leak Week Waterwise schools are encouraged to take the time to spot a leak with some activity plans.
Leaks can be extremely wasteful and costly. Did you know that a leaking toilet can result in nearly 3 buckets of wasted water a day!
Here is a link to the Waterwise website with details on how to run your own Seek a Leak at home.
Congratulations to St Emilie’s for being recipients of a Woolworths Junior Landcare grant this year. The grant will be used to sustain the various environmental projects that we offer our students.
Our project is planting and managing our vegetable garden. We will be planting in six garden beds and the produce will be harvested and used; students will create and develop their own recipes using produce from the garden. Students will use natural resources to construct an outdoor bush ‘classroom’. The students will monitor the activity of the bandicoot and ensure which flora species is needed to provide enough food for the bandicoot. The students will also monitor and manage invasive weeds in the bushland.
Dear Parents and Students
The team in MPR – Music, Physical Education and Science, would like to wish all our families and student’s a very happy Christmas and a safe and peaceful holiday break.
We look forward to seeing you all in 2019.
From Mr Dabbs, Mrs Cogger and Mr Davis.
Many of you in the school community are aware that we have two Southern Boobook Owls living in the school bushland. In February Mrs Cogger took these photos of the owls.
In early November Mr Cogger found a baby owlet at the base of a tree.
He climbed a ladder to put it back in the hollow of the tree and then found two more babies.
Over the next 3-4 weeks we were all aware of the baby owlets in the tree hollow. An adult owl kept watch on a branch in front of the hollow day after day.
Mr Cogger was very interested to find out what went on in the hollow in the night so he set up the schools ‘night activation camera’. This is the same camera that we use to get coverage of the bandicoot when he/she visits.
Here are a few video clips of the owlets at night.
Watch this owlet swivel its head.
There are two adults in the hollow feeding the owlets
Adult delivers a live mouse to the hollow
Adult delivers a live moth to the hollow
Owlet nearly choking on the moth
The baby owlets have grown up and this week we found that the hollow is now empty. We are happy that this family of owls found our school bushland to be a safe place to breed and hope that they’ll return to St Emilie’s next year.
If you are interested in reading more about Southern Boobook Owls follow this link
An extension to our commitment to Waterwise Schools is to look at protecting our water sources in WA. Recently Claire Hammersley from Murdoch University’s Environmental Assessment and Management came to St Emilie’s to present an incursion to the Year 6 students about aquatic weeds, in particular Amazon Frogbit.
Here are a few photos of the incursion. The students learned that Amazon Frogbit was recently declared as a ‘weed’ It was originally brought into WA as an aquarium plant but unfortunately has ended up taking over our waterways, depriving our native species of nutrients and oxygen.
The students learned about the different types of aquatic weeds and their habitats in a waterway.
The students had the opportunity to observe and investigate Amazon Frogbit and a native aquatic plant called Duck Weed.
Claire showed small groups of students the ‘catchment model’. The catchment model demonstrates how water travels on the landscape and shows how water pollution impacts the whole catchment and environment.
This week the students had a visit from Megan Brown from Waterwise Schools. Megan gave presentations to the students on a variety of Waterwise topics.
Megan explained about the important work of the Water Corporation and it’s role to provide clean and healthy water to Western Australians.
Megan showed us water ‘before’ it goes to the treatment plant.
And we compared the water to ‘cleaned’ water.
Megan told us how the dams used to provide Perth with enough drinking water but because of our drying climate we now have to source other water resources.
We learned how there is limestone in the ground around Perth. Limestone ‘holds’ water.
Megan showed us this fantastic model of the water cycle and we could see how the water soaks into the ground below.
We learned about the desalination process.
To conclude we learned that our drinking water comes from three sources – dam, ground and desalination.
The Year 5 students had an interesting presentation about how Aboriginal people valued and sourced water and the strategies that they used to locate sources.
The Year 6 students completed a quiz using Keepads.
We learned about the desalination process – how the water is processed using
This is the unit used in the reverse osmosis process.
The water goes through four stages before it is pumped into our water supply.
The Year 3 students participated in a drama activity about the water cycle.
The focus in the Year 4 session was to learn how leaves use and transport water. The students had the opportunity to use their Rotary microscopes.
We thank Megan from Waterwise Schools for sharing her Waterwise knowledge with us. The presentations were most informative.
Our Excursion to CREEC!
Canning River Eco Education Centre
How lucky were we to go on two excursions in two weeks?!
Our class entered the Celebration of Science Logo Competition and were thrilled (Mrs Cogger actually jumped for joy!) to find out our class had been chosen… out of hundreds of classes… as the winner!
We won a class prize of a ‘free excursion’ to CREEC!
Mrs Cogger provided us with the opportunity to participate through her task on our Purposeful Practice Grid so we decided that she had to come too!
We participated in a ‘Bush Detective’ investigation where we…
Sally…our teacher for the morning… was very impressed with our Science knowledge and lovely manners! We had a fantastic time together and can’t wait to show you what we learnt at our Open Night! Thanks Mrs Cogger for another great opportunity for Science!
And we LOVED the playground!
This week we celebrated National Science Week with Mrs Cogger during Science. Mrs Cogger held the Brain Break quiz for the year 6 students. The students worked in teams of 3 to answer ten Science quiz questions. Mrs Cogger had plenty of prizes to give away all donated by National Science Week.
Our winners with 9/10 were Sienna, Connor and Chanel. They each received a NSW cap.
Second place was Emelia, Meilee and Isabellle. These students received a bookmark and pen.
There were several teams on equal third place.
Mrs Cogger wished to share the National Science Week fun with the teachers. So each morning she emailed out one quiz question. The teachers had to inbox the correct answer. Here are our happy winners.
There were several other National Science Week winners throughout the week. Here are some more happy winners.
