In this story we meet up with Principal Shane Ngatai and some of the kids at Hamilton's Rhode Street School. With a roll made up of 73% Maori from 12 different iwi, plus children from 18 other nationalities the school and learning is centred around Maori worldview. Alexandra and Amelia welcomed us and showed us round the school where food is definitely a major part of the curriculum. The monarch butterflies also find the school gardens a good source of food with swan plants laden with crysalids outside the classrooms, where hydroponic growing experiments hang in the windows. Providing the children with most of their meals including breakfast is not an easy task so as much food as possible is grown in the school grounds and the children also do turns in the commercial kitchen(the only one in any school in NZ; when we visited they were making muffins with frozen raspberries from the gardens for afternoon tea. The soils are all peat so they make a good growing medium, even for the 200 year old variety of potatoes unearthed from an ancient Maori Pa, Doubtless Bay; Shane and his daughter Amelia were given after speaking at a conference. They produced a massive crop which were cooked up for all as hangi and boil-ups and the school remains a guardian for the seed potatoes. There are many fruit trees on site, children are taught to graft trees, and prune and espalier them too. Over 1000 fruit trees have been planted and overseas sponsors are encouraged to be involved with their growing trees via blogs. Every year the school has a kai fest, a huge fund raiser for the school one class made blueberry ice cream which proved so popular they were able to buy an ice cream maker to make it with in the future. ‘As schools go it is quite small but has a beautiful atmosphere’. Find out more on the schools website http://www.rhodestreet.school.nz