Mrs Reti-Huch's Year 3 Class!: A Fabulous Day at the Gardens!

The Juniors went to the Auckland Botanic Gardens on Friday, 15 February 2013. We enjoyed a full day of flowery fun.

First the bus picked us up from school. We felt happy and joyful about riding on the bus. We arrived at the Auckland Botanic Gardens, we went into the covered area to eat our morning tea. After morning tea we walked across the gardens to the kids garden, and into the classroom with our garden's teacher Susie.

Here we are riding on the bus

Here is Mr and Mrs Prout - Caleb's Mum and Dad. Mrs Prout is a teacher; Mr Prout came to help us for the day

Mrs O'Connor was an awesome parent helper too

Ngarangi and Hunter are being funny with their delicious oranges

Here are our new friends from Room 1

In the classroom we were learning about the life-cycle of a plant and how it grows from a seedling. Did you know plants have petals, roots, leaves and a stem? These are their parts.

The Life Cycle of a Seed

Susie teaching us about the life cycle of a seed.

Lauren is looking at the parts of the plant with her magnifying glass

Caleb is labelling the parts of a plant

Susie taught us about pollenation. This is where insects pick up pollen and mix it with other plant's pollen to make new plants. We had fun finding the pollen in the flowers.

Susie showing us how bees collect and redistribute pollen

Rehutai found pollen

Daniel and Tyrone found some pollen too

A highlight of our trip was when some students got to dress up in flower costumes. We acted out how the pollenation happens.

Here are our lovely 'flowers'! Daniel, Mose, Ngarangi and Verity

Ngarangi took his role very seriously, holding up his stamen proudly

Some bumble bees and butterflies taking the pollen from one plant to the next

The last part of our lesson was learning to plant a seed.

We each got a yoghurt pot with holes in the bottom. We filled it over half way with some soil. Then we put some Calendula seeds in the pot. We covered them with some more soil, patted them down then watered them lightly. We can't wait to watch our seeds grow as we give them plenty of sunlight, fresh air and water to grow.

Ready to plant our seeds.

We used our best listening skills

Te Whero, Trinity, Jode Reign and Kiri are busy planting

Caleb is adding his seeds to his pot

We would like to thank Susie for an amazing day - we enjoyed being in her class and all the exciting things she taught us.

After the class we had lunch under the trees, and spent the afternoon exploring the different gardens. We all think we would like to go back to the gardens, especially now that we know so much more about flowers and how they grow!