St. Edmund’s Primary School create a special hexagonal garden area and Bug Hotel

25 February 2012

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The project

We got the idea from the Eco-Schools website to take part in the Pod’s Bug Hotel project.  The Eco-Committee decided they would like to dress up in something green and ask for donations towards making a special hexagonal garden area and bug hotel.  The six gardens contain 2 x flowers, 1 x bug hotel, 1 x strawberries, 1 x rhubarb, 1 x herbs (this we are extending this year). In the centre we bought a gala apple tree.

Delivering the project and linking it to the curriculum

On special bug topic paper a note went home giving the children a month to collect something we could use to make either a rockery, bug hotel (wood, bark, stones, pipe) and plants.  Then we would all bring them into school and the same day and make our special area.  Each child wore their Green Day badge and we hung the bunting along the school fence and sent home information and posters prepared during the day for the parents.  Work was displayed in the hall on the eco-board for visitors to see.

Challenges

We had to ask for adult help to construct our special beds in preparation for the day and were lucky that two Dads gave up their weekend to make us six boxes.  We asked for help with stone and a local business donated one ton of gravel but some of this went missing at weekend which reduced what we had available to use.

Getting the pupils involved

The Eco-Committee decided what they wanted to do.  We moved the beds around before the final resting positions and decide what they wanted to do and we discussed what we would like to put where.  The Class 3 children constructed the hotel and I guided them with the rockery which is an on going project as we could have done with more stone and plants.

Benefits of being an Eco-School

The children all enjoyed building something as a group and we plan to repeat it this year with a similar theme of wearing green but raising money to convert a unusable area into a seated area with tires and flower beds, they plan to fund this with donations for Green Day and they came up with an idea of a sponsored run which we plan to do in the afternoon so hope to buy a bench to sit on.  We made a huge tree which was covered with green pledges from the children and some parents.

Funding

We relied totally on money raised from wearing green and donations of stone and plants from parents.

Using the Pod’s resources

The Pod’s Green Day and Bug Hotel ideas were combined into one project as I personally don’t have enough time allocated to complete all the Pod entries etc to gain badges so tend to take the ideas from a variety of projects on www.jointhepod.org and tweak them to suit our school and time table.

Measuring the impact

I did not measure the impact as such as there was not saving in money to be made but it was easy to see that the children enjoyed the idea and processes involved.  They continue to water and weed their strawberry and rhubarb, flowers and tree and obviously enjoyed the experience as they want to do it again this year expect bigger and better.

Lessons learned

Go for it!  Even if it is something small they children love getting outside and having a go, they take pride in achieving target and goals.  Our children showed such maturing and remembered projects we had done over 18 months ago which I had forgotten and enjoyed telling our lovely assessor all about them.

Next steps

As I mentioned we will repeat our Green Day again in May and we are focusing on saving energy next as we have solar panels and senor lighting in the planning but these and awaiting the yes for funding.