St George’s Lower School Eco activities 2011 - 2014

Here is a summary of the activities carried out by the Lower School girls at St George’s – you can see we have been very busy!2011 - 2012

• Carried out an environmental review and created our action plans for the four areas we thought needed most attention: FLEW – Food and the environment, Litter, Energy and water.
• The Primary 6’s entered a competition called ‘Grow your country in a basket – for the Olympics. They had to research Kazakhstan and grow the plants to represent that country.
• We thought that would be a good idea to offer to the whole of St G’s so we ran ‘Grow Your Country in a Planter’. Each year group was given a country and we researched the country. We bought planters. In Lower School, P6’s got China, Removes got Ireland, and Lower 4 had France.
• Eco Day of Action in June 2012 – an afternoon with two presentations. One was from a man from Fair trade called Jeff the other was from Gardening Scotland – he was also called Jeff. Some Lower 4’s decorated the Eco Rap and these are displayed in every classroom.

2012 - 2013School orchard: We got the chance to apply for 8 free fruit trees. We did the application, talked to Billy and Scott, the gardeners and submitted the entry form. We got the trees and planted them on Eco Day of action. We had to raise money to pay for stakes to hold them up, so we did a ‘pennies down the sofa’ campaign and raised £31.62 and the stakes cost £28.Travel to school survey: Each girl in the whole school filled in a questionnaire sheet about how she travelled to school on one Thursday in February. The Eco group put the information into a spreadsheet – it took hours!Eco Day of Action: Each class in the Lower School took part in an activity related to our action plans, during normal lessons times, then we held a huge assembly in which each class gave a presentation about their activities. These were: Tasting FairTrade Chocolate; watching Fairtrade DVD and designing week’s menus using UK produce and local shops (not supermarkets); Fairtrade drama about sweat-shops; making bird fat feeders; carrying out a litter survey indoors and outdoors; litter-picking outdoors and indoors; planting the school orchard; analysis of Travel to School spreadsheet.Other activities:

• entered a competition called Grow your animal’s habitat’ run by the Zoo and Eco Schools. We chose the Lesser Kudu.
• Weekly weeding and watering of the school orchard (the 8 trees)
• Carried out a new environmental review and chose the three areas: Sustaining our World, Litter and Biodiversity
• Made eco-booklets from printer error paper rather than putting it into the recycling bins
• Made ‘Turn off the taps’ signs for all the bathrooms
• Held an Official opening of the School orchard Tuesday 28^th May at 8.20am with invited guests from the Rotary Breakfast group
• Spoke to staff about having raised beds in Lower School
• We are going to present the results from the Travel to school survey to Upper School

Travel to school survey results presented at the ‘Safer routes to school’ meeting.2013 - 2014Primary 5’s visited Lower School and planted pumpkin seeds which were tended over the summer and planted out. They didn’t produce any pumpkins but they enjoyed watching them trying to grow.Primary 6’s lifted potatoes planted by the older girls and make potato scones in Foodstudies.We were awarded our Green Flag for EcoSchools in September.Primary 6’s are having Outdoor learning lessons every week for one hour. In these lessons, they have looked at the wildlife in Lower School, planted cabbages, broccoli, leeks and potatoes. They have planted winter-flowering displays in the tubs at the front of the school, weeded the school orchard, dead-headed the daffodils. Recently they have planted peas and radishes in pots and will be planting them out when the weather is right.Eco Day of Action: sustaining our world – the Eco group wrote to the local Co-op who donated £25 of Fairtrade goods for a Fair Trade tuck shop. We sent the profits to charity. We are now having a Fairtrade tuck shop on the last Friday of each month. The chocolate is the best-seller. Litter – we carried out a litter-pick again, though there was very little litter to be found. Biodiversity – girls were asked to bring in old trainers. These were filled with compost and wild flowers, calendula, linum and radishes were planted in them.   They have now been transplanted into pots and will be moved outside soon.