Today for our John Muir award we carried out activities to conserve the playground. Firstly we carried out a litter pick around the school grounds, we were shocked just how much litter we found! We also put the bug hotel back together as parts had fallen out. We then worked in small groups to plant some wild seeds at the top of the playground.

Litter Picking

Fixing the Bug Hotel

Planting

This afternoon we went to the forest as part of our John Muir award. The weather was great and we had fun exploring and discovering what was in the forest.

The first activity we did was quite challenging as the children had to work in pairs to find something in the environment starting with each letter of the alphabet. We had some great ideas like bark for ‘B’, uneven ground for ‘U’ and feathers for ‘F’, letters like x,y and z were a little trickier!

The next activity followed on from our work in the playground yesterday and we continued to explore our creative sides by using natural materials to create artwork on the forest floor. It was great having different materials to use compared with what we found in the school ground.

Today we started our John Muir Award in primary 4/5. We learned all about who John Muir was and why he is a significant individual. We spoke about his early life and his love for nature. The children were all very excited about getting started and are looking forward to all of the outdoor learning opportunities.

We took the opportunity to explore and discover the natural materials in our playground. We spoke about Andy Goldsworthy who is an environmental artist and looked at examples of his work. The children were able to identify the natural materials in each of his sculptures. The boys and girls then split into pairs and threes to work on an art challenge outdoors. We collected natural materials from all over the playground, including sticks, twigs, stones, grass cuttings and leaves. The children then worked collaboratively to create their own outdoor art using the materials they collected. The results were fantastic! We had everything from a reindeer to a football pitch, have a look at the pictures below to see the creations! Back in class we discussed the skills we have used today and decided the main focus was creativity and teamwork.

Collecting and creating:

Our finished artwork:

Primary 3/4 sent us a letter asking for our support.  They knew we were doing our John Muir Award and asked if we could buy some flowers or plants that would attract bees and plant them, as they were finding out how important bees are to humans. So today we planted flowers and bulbs up in our wildlife garden.

This afternoon the children were litter picking.  We collected over 5kgs of litter.  The children also learned why we pick litter up e.g. saving animals, looking after the environment and also they learned how long it takes for objects to decompose.  The children were amazed at how long it takes for materials to decompose e.g. plastic takes up to 450 years and cans take up to 1000 years.

They understand the importance of not dropping litter and will write raps on the dangers of litter picking.