Kitchen Garden - we need your help!
Your chance to own a (delicious) bit of SKiPPS history
As you are probably aware, at the start of term, we welcomed five beautiful, friendly chickens to SKiPPS and they are now living happily in our custom-built chook shed, in the quiet area at the back of the Kitchen Dining Room.
Henrietta, Gallina Cioccolato, Sunshine, Wendy, and Zelda the Brave have been super busy in their new chicken coop and have laid the first ever SKiPPS eggs!
We are offering families the chance to be a part of history and enter a raffle to win a dozen of these delicious, happy eggs from our very own chickens.
Buy your raffle tickets now at https://compasstix.com/event/754616a4-ba73-4040-bbb0-a480add0b800
Winners will be drawn at assembly on Friday 8th and 15th. Entries are valid between now and the end of the year. The number of winners each week is subject to the eggs available at the time of the draw.
Eggs can be collected from the kitchen dining room after the draw or sent home with particularly careful children...
All monies raised will go to purchasing a new retractable hose for the back deck to water the plants and give the chickens fresh water.
Tickets to the raffle cost $2 per entry. Enter as many times as you like!
Help us to look after our chickens over the summer (free eggs included!)
Staying on a chicken theme, over the upcoming school holidays, we are looking for some parent/carer volunteers to help spread the workload of looking after them.
Each day we need to check in on the chickens, collect the eggs, top up food and water, remove manure and replace hay. This should take 15 minutes maximum (however you are welcome to hang out and relax with the chickens if you would like!).
If you think you can help out, (even if only for a day or two), please access the helper roster at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B094BABA62EA3F85-46609540-summer and select the days you are around in St Kilda and able to help out.
Allison will run very short training sessions after school Monday 11th December (3.40pm) and before school Tuesday 12th (8.30am) to show you where the equipment is kept and how to access the coop. She will make contact directly via signupgenius to contact people.
As a thank-you for helping us out, each day you volunteer you get to keep the eggs you collect. There should be 5 per day.
A hive of activity
We were excited this week to install our new flow hive in a secluded location at school and to welcome its buzzy residents.
Working with Mike from 'The Basin Backyard', our Buildings and Grounds sub-committee have worked hard this year to make this idea a reality.
In doing this, we were successful in securing a $1000 Woolworths Junior Landcare Grant which paid for the actual hive.
We also used a working bee to prepare the area, invested in training materials and mentoring, bought a set of bee-keeping suits and materials and we are all set to go.
The hive will serve a couple of purposes at SKiPPS. Year 3/4 students will have a chance to learn about the fascinating functions of a bee hive through the kitchen garden program, they will learn about the important role of pollination and biodiversity . they will also be able to harvest the honey from the hive as a healthy, sweet ingredient in their cooking.
A special thank-you to Mathew Saliba and Allison Shanahan for their work on this.
If you are interested in joining our 'bee team' and helping us to look after the bees and the hive in 2024, (you will even get to wear one of the suits!), please contact Allison on allison.shanahan@education.vic.gov.au
SKiPPS is one of 1,107 primary schools and early learning centres across Australia to receive a Woolworths Junior Landcare grant to help grow our next generation of environmental champions.
The children and teachers are looking forward to learning to care for the bees and our new flow hive and enjoying the tasty honey when it starts flowing at some point next year.
Click on the Woolworths Junior Landcare Grant map to read more about our project and others*.