I have had over 100 students from year 1-6 working with the sea cleaners kit. These are pullout enrichment groups, so we took turns with the gloves etc. First we learnt about our local sea - the Hauraki Gulf. I loved the idea to do our Pepeha - some of the younger kids had not done theirs before and it gave us all an understanding of each other as well as the importance of our connection with the land and bodies of water. We used a great video from young ocean explorers about pepeha, where tiki talks about his. The kids loved the pepeha creator website too. We thought about where rubbish might come from and what impact it might have. One of my groups (25 children) were lucky enough to have an experience with the virtual reality goggles of the Blake nz trust - wow - such an impact to see healthy sea versus unhealthy. The kids were horrified to see rubbish and lack of sea life in the ocean around the city. Each group decided to be responsible for cleaning a different area - around our school, the open stormwater drain that runs around our school field, and the park across the road where the stormwater drain continues on its way towards the beach. We were surprised at how much we found. At first glance it looked pretty clean, but when we looked closely we found a lot of rubbish. There were so many Little plastic corners of food packaging. Kids then decided on actions to take - making posters, videos, powerpoints, writing stories. We put information and a story in our school newsletter so that the rest of our community will hopefully think to help - by creating less rubbish and by picking up rubbish they see. I have a lovely caring bunch of kids- thank you school kit and sea cleaners for empowering them to make a difference!









