Featured School: Milford Pre School Plus

Age really doesn’t matter when you are passionate and have a great teacher to guide you! These are just some of the activities the group has accomplished in the last two years:- Our recycled wood planter was installed into our allotment. We used the company woodbox that uses recycled and sustainable wood. We filled it with peat free compost.- Food bank collection for after Christmas, we collected tins and packages for our local food bank; to show the children that some people don’t have as much as we do.- Plastic straws display. We used paper plates for turtles and sea life, along with the straws from the children’s lunch box cartons. This meant they don’t have to go in the rubbish bin. The children are knowledgeable about not using plastic straws and the harm they do. In our eco newsletters, we have been asking parents not to use cartons but refillable bottles instead.- Bird watch, bird feeders made. We always participate in the RSPB Birdwatch. It encourages the children to name the birds they see. In our garden, we have two sparrow terrace boxes and two blue tit boxes, all of which are used. The children watch the parents feeding and see the fledglings. We always make various feeders, from cut up pumpkins to plastic milk bottles.- Soup made from our leeks. We use our vegetables to make warming soup at forest school.- We sow seeds such as sunflowers, beans and wild flowers that we were given from Grow Wild. The children know how important wild flowers are to the pollinators. They talk about pollen and nectar within the plants.- Smoothie bike. We use Fairtrade bananas to make our smoothies, using pedal power! We talk about healthy eating too.- Allotment. We grow potatoes, peas, beans, courgettes, raspberries and strawberries. As well as fruit trees. We pick and eat them, cook with them or share with our families. This shows the children where food comes from and that it doesn’t have to travel for miles.We show our produce off in the Milford Produce show, where we win prizes for our efforts! We won best pre-school award in the Plastic waste competition, kindly taken in by Gill Hickman.We were lucky enough to have a Living roof placed on our shed, to show the children that bio diversity can grow and develop on roofs as well as in gardens.- We used our grown pumpkins to make Pumpkin soup, joining in with the RHS big soup share.- We are collecting stamps, batteries, bottle tops. We collect a variety of recyclable objects to stop them going into landfill. Also, computer equipment, which goes to Jamies in Southampton, who sells upcycled computer equipment that, has been re furnished.- Gill Hickman came in to show us a plastic bag experiment. The children learnt that normal carrier bags do not compost but compostable bags do. We use compostable bags at forest school.- We learnt all about “Nurdles”. We took out pieces of plastic collected from the beaches. When we sieved them, we found nurdles hiding in the sand. This really showed the children that plastic is so bad for sea life, as they eat pieces of plastic or get wrapped in it.- We were shown how to make a Wormery in a plastic bottle. We talked about what food is suitable for food compost, so nothing is wasted. Worms are brilliant for the garden too!- We rescued some frogspawn from the pond as the frosts came. We have been observing them change into froglets and have been able to pop them back into our wildlife pond.