Space Seeds

Primary 5, 6 and 7 were doing Space as their topic when an opportunity arose for them to investigate seeds that had spent some time up at the space station.

We waited eagerly for the seeds to arrive, then we came together to start planting the seeds.

We didn't know if we had the actual seeds from the space station or if they were the control seeds. We were curious but wanted to make sure that the seeds germinated.

We hoped that we had created the correct habit for the seeds to grow.  The weather had changed and our classrooms were very hot, so we had to make sure that we kept the soil moist.

Tray 6 seeds have started to grow.

Unfortunately due to the Easter Holidays and the hot weather conditions our seeds didn't make it.  We submitted our information to collate with all the other schools around the world who were also taking part in the experiment.

We need to remember to consider all possible weather conditions and the time of year that we are planting our seeds to ensure that they have the best possible environment to grow to maturity.

Primary 1/2 Investigate

Primary 1/2's topic is Zog the Dragon.  Zog lived in the countryside near a castle where a Princess lived.  Zog went to school outdoors and Mrs Dragon, his teacher tried hard to teach Zog and his classmates how to fly and be real dragons.  Zog was a friendly dragon and he didn't want to be frightening princesses, so when the Princess was captured by the other dragons, Zog helped her escape.  The Princess liked the dragons and wanted to stay and help keep them safe. The Princess wanted to be a flying doctor.  Zog helped to fly her around their environment to make people better.

Children from 1/2 went out into the school grounds to look for things that lived there.  They were sad when they found human and tree litter as they felt that this spoiled the look of the environment.  Most of the litter had been blown among the trees because our school is at the top of a hill and we quite often have high winds blowing here.  The children wanted to investigate litter and look for ways to help everything that lived in the forest area and around the school grounds.  They collected lots of litter and sorted it into human and tree litter.  There were lots of different insects living on the twigs and leaves that were collected.  The children looked at these through the class microscope and the children sketched some of the insects and learned about different species and where they like to live.

The tree litter that was collected was used to create a cave area for our Zog display.

Here are some photographs of us working and learning together.

Exploring Habitats

Primary 6/7 have been investigating Tropical Rainforests and wanted to find out how different they are to forest areas in our local area.

As part of our writing lesson they went out into our forest area to investigate what lived there.

They looked at the different trees and plants that were growing around the school and looked for areas where insects lived.  It was Autumn when they visited, so the leaves had started to fall and the children found out that lots of different insects were sheltering under the tree litter.  Some children collected specimens of insects, fruit and leaves to look at under our digital microscopes.  They returned all specimens to their place of origin to help preserve the environment.

As the children moved through our forest area they focused on their senses and listened for sounds of wildlife.  They felt what it was like to move through a forest and smelled different country smells ...

On return to class they wrote an imaginary piece of writing about a journey through the forest.

Volunteers Day

Report from Mrs Goldie about Volunteers Day

Employee Volunteering’ are an organisation who work with many companies around the UK, they organise teams of people who take a day out of the office to volunteer in the local community.  Teams tackle a wide range of practical tasks, however one that proved more popular than any other was working with schools in the community.  On Thursday 2^nd June 2016 we were lucky enough to be visited by approximately 30 volunteers from Chivas Regal (a local company) and several of our parents/neighbours.

The volunteers arrived at 9.00am  and worked tirelessly in the heat to transform our school grounds.  They weeded the whole garden area, planted conifer trees and plants which we had purchased from a local nursery, they also re-built our ‘plastic bottle’ greenhouse and painted our climbing wall.  What they achieved was nothing short of a miracle.  Our school grounds looked amazing, with wonderful pots and gardens of beautifully coloured flowers.  The dedication and comradery showed by all who helped was exceptional and exuded a wonderful feeling of community spirit.

They have helped restore a variety of different habitats for insects, flowers and animals which our children can observe, investigate and learn from.

The Reporter sent along a photographer and our story was published for everyone in our local area to read about. 

The Workers!

Everyone in school helped to keep the new plants and trees hydrated in this very hot weather, so that we could continue to provide shelter and food within our school habitats.

August 2106

All children in school have been given the choice of which business group they wanted to work in this year.  

The children below will be working together as the Eco Committee, along with all staff in school, parents and our partners in the community.

The Eco Committee will be continuing on with the work that the committee started last year.

Please help out when ever you can with our activities.  We really enjoy having you join us as we work and learn around the school and in the community.

Our Eco Committee (Business Group) - children from Primary 1 to 7.

Litter Overview

We have created our action plans to work towards for our second Green Flag.

Our topics are Litter, Biodiversity and Food and the Environment.

You can find these on our Eco Board in the school foyer.  Please read through the plans if you can.  It would be really great if you could work together with us to achieve our second Green Flag.

Current work includes:

1)  Setting up a Litter Wardens Committee and a class rota.
2)  Carrying out a Litter Survey around the playground and inside the school.
3)  Suggesting areas that need litter bins.
4)  Checking our what litter picking equipment we have in school.
4)  Running a competition to design our Litter Reward Stickers.
5)  Speaking to the Head Teacher about our plans for litter.
6)  Speaking to the whole school at assembly about our plans for litter.

We are arranging for the green house to be rebuilt and need your help collecting bottles again.  We need 2litre bottles.  Please remove labels and rinse out before sending to school.  If you could remove the bottom of the bottle about 5 cm from the base that would also help save us time when rebuilding.

Welcome

Welcome to our Eco Group Blog Page.

You will have noticed that we are now flying our First Green Flag.  Work is now underway to achieve our Second Green Flag.

We have finished collecting information for our Environmental Review and are using the information to create our Action Plan.

This information will be available soon.

We hope you will be able to join us in our activities when you can.