Over the last term, we have been promoting, managing and staffing our school ‘Tutti Fruitti Tuck Shop’
This has been very well supported by staff and pupils, and one week we had almost 100 customers to serve.
Thanks to everyone’s support and interest, we have raised over £30 profit, which will be spent on a ‘water butt’ to allow us to save rainwater and look after our raised beds!
One of our Eco Club projects this year was to work to provide food and safety for the array of wildlife that exists around our school.
The pupils were very excited to get involved in this, and worked incredibly hard to create individual bird houses, hedgehog houses, a ‘bug hotel’ and a ‘wild garden’ planted with a variety of species of plants designed to shelter and nourish wildlife.
Check out what we have been up to below!
This term the Eco Club have been hard at work planning, planting and tending to our raised beds.
Our ‘Formal’ garden has housed a colourful collection of Tulips, Primroses, and Daffodils. The pupils all worked very hard to develop their skills, learning how to ‘tie down’ daffodils, ‘deadhead’ plants, and identify weeds amongst the blooms.
Visitors to the school have passed on many compliments – a wonderful new addition to our school environment!
After a break, we are back in business in Eco Club on Tuesday afternoons, and already we have been getting down to work on our Eco Club Projects for this term.
So far, we have been weeding and planting in the raised beds, giving fantastic talks to each class about recycling and waste within our school, and the most important new development – opening our Healthy Break Tuck Shop!
Our tuck shop will run each Wednesday break time, and everyone in school (including teachers!) will be able to purchase lovely fresh fruit from the Eco Club Helpers!
Please support our Healthy Break Tuck Shop!
Well done and thank you to Eco Club for making such a fantastic effort at this!
This week we got down to the serious business of working towards our Green Flag award!
We have put a number of environmental measures in place. We thought it would be a good idea to review the great work that we have already done, so today the Year 4 to 6 Eco Club Members worked in teams to visit each classroom to audit the measures that are already in place. They talked politely to each teacher and reported their findings back to Eco Club.
During this time the Year Seven pupils took on the responsibility of looking at our Formal Environmental Review, considering how we are currently doing and working towards creating our new Action Plan.
We all got together to see which steps we had completed towards the Green Flag award and discussed our next steps.
This week we took advantage of the good weather to get outdoors to do some planting!
We were armed with fantastic resources from Dobbies Garden Superstore, Lisburn.
Using the know-how we gained on our Eco Club trip, we planted daffodil and tulip bulbs.
In order to add some colour to our ‘Raised Bed’ we planted a selection of brightly coloured ‘Winter Pansies’.
The Year Sevens did a great job in preparing the ground for us.
We hope that everyone enjoys looking at our beautiful new flower bed as much as we enjoyed making it.
Thanks so much to Anna Kelly for recording these Eco Club Minutes!
“Today we really had to use our brains. Dobbies had given us crosswords to do after our visit last week.
Most of the answers were fruit related!
We took turns to plant beans in biodegradable pots.”
Over the last few weeks, Eco Club pupils have really enjoyed learning about gardening and have been very busy preparing our raised beds for bulbs and flowers. As a reward for their hard work and commitment to raising environmental awareness, they were invited to attend a workshop in Dobbies today! (We are very proud to be sponsored by Dobbies Garden Superstore, Lisburn, who have very generously donated equipment, flowers and bulbs to plant in our raised beds and have offered us invaluable gardening advice!)
A very excited group of pupils boarded the bus first thing thing this morning and were soon en route to Dobbies. Following an informative talk and tour of the fantastic where pupils were able to showcase their gardening know-how and general knowledge, we were treated to a baking activity (making Eton Mess Muffins using berries grown in Dobbies!) We also worked hard to complete sequencing and labeling activities to reinforce the life cycle of a broad bean.
All pupils were respectful of the other members of the public and were very well behaved- both Mr Armstrong and Miss Briggs were extremely proud when tour leader, Amy pronounced the group as the best school group she had ever worked with.
Well done all- next week we will be placing our bird houses around the school and planting broad beans – see you on Tuesday!
Today was the closing date for our ‘Feed the Birds’ challenge!
Have a look at the fantastic work everyone has put in: phenomenal effort, top results!
We took some time to have a drink and a chat about how we had made the bird houses before getting down to the REAL business of beginning to plant our new bulbs. Great teamwork from everyone on this – there will be a super display of colour in Spring!
Please remember: No Eco Club next week, but we will be back after the school holiday for more fun and learning together!
A real treat for our Eco Club this week – we have been very generously sponsored by Dobbie’s Garden Centre, Lisburn!
Aimee from Dobbies arrived with a fantastic selection of items for us – beautiful plants, exciting bulbs, compost, trowels, forks and even more! What a boost for our activities.
Following Aimee’s advice, we have started our garden project by weeding and tidying our raised beds – this was a big job but was also a lot of fun! We also placed our ladybird houses and bird feeders. We are really enjoying making a positive difference to our school environment.
Great work today – thanks especially to Dobbies and to Callum for his help in clearing up!
The first recycled, hand made bird feeders have started to arrive and look FANTASTIC! Remember if you haven’t returned yours yet, please do so next Tuesday!
This week the Green Team began a new project – The ‘Feed the Birds’ challenge.
After a refreshing sugar-free drink we had a discussion about some of the birds and wildlife which are in the local area – there were many good contributions from our knowledgeable Eco Club Members.
We discussed how we could encourage more birds and animals such as hedgehogs to visit our school.
We set a challenge to design a bird feeder – there were lots of great suggestions!
Everyone worked together today looking on the laptops to find ideas and to begin their designs.
Here are some great ideas:
http://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/families/children/makeanddo/activities/birdfeeder.aspx
https://www.pinterest.com/onepartsunshine/diy-bird-feeders-to-make-with-kids/
http://www.earth911.com/home/7-diy-recycled-bird-feeders/
http://www.diyncrafts.com/3515/home/23-diy-birdfeeders-will-fill-garden-birds
Good luck with your creations, everyone!
Another fantastic turn out at this afternoon’s Eco Club – well done all!
After a quick, refreshing sugar free drink everyone quickly settled to complete our first recycled craft of the year. The Treasure boxes look fantastic: well done to everyone for helping each other out!
We have purchased some new bird feeders to add the the school environment – lets fill and place them next week and visit each classroom to see which of our environmentally friendly actions are in place!
See you next week!
A record number of pupils at Eco Club today – well done to all of the pupils who gave up their time for a fun and worthwhile purpose.
This week as part of our goal of reducing waste, recycling, and reusing old items while having fun we made ‘Recycled Treasure Box craft’. Old shoeboxes, scraps of wrapping paper and craft odds-and-ends were used to great effect by everyone and it was excellent to see the older Eco Club Members assisting the Younger and New members! The Treasure boxes look amazing and will be ready to take home next week.
Next week we will be placing our new ‘Ladybird Houses’ and Bird feeders- let’s keep making our school an even nicer place to be!
Today, our school was very excited to have a visit from a special bus, which was designed to raise awareness of Environmental issues that we can have a direct impact on.
Each class was invited to hop on to the bus and look, listen and learn about waste, recycling, and how we can help.
There were reports of great thinking, super behaviour and a really positive attitude to change from all classes- well done Dromara Primary School pupils – we are so proud!
Here are some pictures from the big day – can you spot yourself?
What did you learn today?
Welcome back everyone, and a special welcome to our new Eco Club pupils!
We had a busy first day back today!
Our meeting started with a glass of sugar-free juice and a discussion of what we had achieved last year.
Our new pupils had a chance to look at our Eco Club Blog and there was an opportunity for everyone to see what we will be doing over the next few weeks – we are very excited!
We kicked off our activities by:
*Delivering new ‘food caddies’ to each classroom. These will reduce the amount of waste going to landfill from our school
*A school ground ‘Litter pick’ – we found 131 pieces of litter, a good improvement from 178 this time last year!
*Raking our ‘raised bed’in preparation for this term’s gardening activities
Great enthusiasm from everyone today!
Next week we are making Recycled Craft – please remember to bring in some old gift wrap, craft items or trinkets to add to yours!
Our final Eco Club meeting this term- time flies when you are having fun.
In this our final meeting we completed our crafty Recycled crafts – they look very crafty, bright and funky: and what a great way to reduce waste while also having fun!
One of the requirements for our Silver Eco Schools award is that we write an Eco Code to share with everyone in our School. We put our heads together and had some really fantastic ideas -this was the finished result.
We decided on an Acrostic Style to make it more memorable and tried to include as many of our Eco Club Focus areas as possible.
Here we are hard at work!
D is for Dromara Primary School Eco Club
R is for Recycling everything we can
O is for Our Eco Club Blog – http://www.dromaraprimaryschool.edublogs.org !
M is for More healthy breaks!
A is for An improved school environment as we grow things and litter pick
R is for Reducing waste and reusing when we can
A is for All of us – we want everything to get involved
A clever way to present our important message – hopefully this will let us achieve our Silver Award.
A big thank you to EVERYONE for their hard work this term.
Next term we have even bigger and better thing planned – so keep an eye on the blog and the notice board for more information!
Have a great Summer everyone!
The meeting began at 3:00pm sharp in Miss Briggs’ Room.
This week we were making Recycled craft as part of our attempt to reduce Waste.
All of the bottles we used to make the craft were collected in the space of one week – we were happy that they did not just go to landfill!
We were able to use some waste paper from the new waste paper boxes to make papier mache to cover the bottles. It will take a while for the bottles to dry, but when they do we will be able to paint and decorate them. There has been some great ideas for decoration already!
There are some more great ideas for plastic bottle crafts here:
The meeting ended after a very sticky tidy-up session at 3:45pm
Thanks to Nicole B, Year 6 for this fantastic contribution to our Eco Club Blog:
‘Hello all Eco Club fans!
Today we were going around our school picking up bits of litter with the Eco Club’s new Litter Pickers as you will see in the pictures. On the way we found a new friend Jimmy Longlegs (the spider!)
I thought it was great fun going around helping to clean up our school to make it a nicer place (not that it wasn’t nice before!) I actually couldn’t beleive the things that people left, bags with junk in it, sweet wrappers and a bit of broken sponge! I had so much fun because our school is really nice and we have a kind teacher called Miss Briggs.
Bye all Eco Club fans!’
Our meeting started at 3pm as usual with everyone gathering in Miss Briggs’ room.
Today we had a chance to look at the Eco Club Blog together, finding out how to access it in school and at home and how to add comments -everyone’s ideas are welcome here!
We have got new computers in school, this was a great way to make use of the new technology!
Once we had all noted the web address, we decided to tackle an issue that we really care about – litter.
We have a litter picking rota set up in school which allows each class to have an opportunity to litter pick within the school grounds, but we are very fond of our pitch and community centre which lie just outside the school gates and they have been looking a little scruffy lately! Green Team to the rescue!
Gathering our Litter Pickers (bought with Eco Club funds!), Hi-Vis vests and gloves we set off.
On the way we encountered a HUGE spider! (You can leave your ideas for a name in the comments!)
We had a really productive half hour of team work clearing discarded bottles, sweetie wrappers, and fruit skins from around the area, making it a much nicer place to be before heading back to conclude our meeting. Green team: a good job, well done!
Next week- please bring a 2ltr milk carton and an orange juice carton as we would like to make some recycled craft using them – check out some of these awesome ideas online if you want to make a head start!
http://gb.pinterest.com/babieben/milk-carton-crafts/
Remember you can read the blog each week, and add your thoughts in the comments!
The meeting began at 3:00pm today.
It was a cloudy day, but not to be discouraged we put our coats on and headed outdoors to add some finishing touches to our Eco School Flower bed.
The flowers we planted last week with Mrs Vaughan and Mrs Collin’s help (Thank you!) looked beautiful.
Today we were adding multi-coloured ‘Salvias’.
After some discussion, we placed the young plants in a pattern around the flower bed. Mr Armstrong came out to pass an approving eye over our efforts before we began carefully planting.
It was fascinating to see that some wildlife (Bob the worm!) had already taken up residence – luckily no one was too squeamish!
Once we had finished planting and had tidied up, we made labels for the plants so anyone who admires our garden will know what type of flowers we have planted.
Meeting Start: 3:00pm
Location: Miss Briggs’ Classroom/Outdoors at the new raised planting areas
Present: Eco Club members, Miss Briggs
The meeting began promptly at 3:00pm.
After a brief review of what we did last week, everyone was keen to see how our seeds were growing.
A quick examination showed that unbelievably, the bird seed had grown fastest! There was a thick crop of cress, and already the spinach and daisies had sprouted. We are looking forward to what will grow next!
Inspired by our gardening success, we went outdoors to begin work on our new Eco Club Garden.
We had a great discussion about what should be planted in each of the growing areas and decided that the first growing area should showcase flowers (Nicole said ‘that is the first thing people will see, it will be welcoming’) and Tom suggesting the second area for vegetables (‘It is a larger area so we can fit more in’).
Miss Briggs had purchased some small plants which we could plant using our gardening knowledge. There was some great discussion about where we should place each variety (Petunias, Marigolds and Lobelias) with Madison suggesting that ‘The delicate plants should go in the middle with the hardier plants round the outside to protect them’ – great thinking Madison.
Unfortunately, it started to rain heavily and we were driven inside. As Callum said ‘That’s just what happens in the Emerald Isle’!
Not to be discouraged, we decided to let the teachers in the school know what we will be doing this term by distributing some resources which will let them all get involved in our Eco Schools project.
Well done to the Eco Club Members for explaining these new resources to the teachers who can pass the information on to all of the pupils in the school!
Meeting closed at 3:45pm
Meeting Start: 3:00pm
Location: Miss Briggs’ Classroom
Present: Eco Club members, Miss Briggs
The meeting began promptly at 3:00pm when Miss Briggs welcomed old and new Eco Club members to the meeting.
After a brief review of what was achieved in the previous term, Miss Briggs explained that today we would learn how to plant and care for seeds so that we could begin to create an Eco Club garden in our brand new raised bedding areas.
We worked together to plant wild flowers, Livingstone Daisies, cress, sunflowers, spinach…and even bird seed. We guessed which would grow quickly and discussed how each seed required different conditions for germination.
Everyone made a great contribution to the activity and didn’t mind getting their hands dirty.
Meeting closed at 3:45pm
The Eco Club have completed an Eco Schools (Northern Ireland) Audit to identify which areas we want to focus on this term.
We are thinking about
-WASTE
-LITTER
-RECYCLING
-HEALTHY LIFESTYLES
-THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT
We have started work on each of these areas already!
For more information on any of these areas, please check out our Eco School Notice Board, tagged blog posts, or ask any member of the school Eco Club.
Dromara Primary School Eco Club is an extra-curricular activity which runs from 3:00- 3:45pm each Tuesday in Miss Briggs’ classroom.
It is a gathering of pupils and staff who care deeply about our school and wider environment and who want to learn more about how they can look after it.
Throughout the year many pupils and staff have been involved in Eco Club – it is our goal to make sure that everyone in school is aware of our activities and to make sure that as many people as possible get involved to help make our school a nicer, greener place to be.
Out Eco Club is currently working towards an Eco Schools (Northern Ireland) Green Flag award.
You can read more about the Eco Schools movement here: http://www.eco-schoolsni.org/about.aspx
Any Dromara Primary School pupils in Year Four-Seven or staff are welcome to join us on Tuesday afternoons!
See you there!
Welcome to the Dromara Primary School Eco Club Blog!
On this blog, you can find out what the pupils of Dromara Primary School are doing to help the school and wider environment as they work towards their Eco Schools Northern Ireland Green Flag Award.