Eco Fortnight Begins!

Today marked the second day of our focus on sustainability: the school is split into three groups and each group is looking at one of Eco topics. These are litter, waste minimisation and biodiversity.

P1A and P1B-Waste Minimisation-Recycling your rubbish
P2-Litter-Putting Litter in its Place
P2/3-Litter-Looking after our School Environment
P3/4-Waste Minimisation-What does it mean to be Biodegradable?
P4/5-Biodiversity-Bird Feeders and Big Bird Watch
P5-Biodiveristy- Wildflower Garden
P6/7J-Litter: Cleaning up Linnvale's streets
P6/7G-Waste Minimisation-Small Changes Can Make Big Impact
P6/7D-Biodiveristy-Building a Bug House and mini beast surveys


Waste Minimisation inAction-Reusing Waste Material
The Forest School group today went out to tend to our overgrown willow tunnel and they started by weaving the new shoots in between the established growth to strengthen the tunnel. From the top, using loppers, they trimmed the longer woodier shoots which threatened to cause our tunnel to collapse. Instead of composting the pruned lengths, they decided they would like to learn  new skill: willow weaving!
This involved working with a partner and encouraging each other.
Their fabulous first attempts are featured below!

I feel a willow weaving club could appear next year after school...

Trimming the willow tunnel took some time.

The first project: make small willow fence for the wildlife garden!

Teamwork made the job easier.

The group was keen to try another challenge and in only 20 minutes their baskets were taking shape! Aren't they wonderful! Teamwork and taking turns made this a smoother and more efficient process.

Eco Schools Scotland Case Study

Linnvale's hard work has been recognised by Eco Schools Scotland and shared on their website as a case study for the water topic. We are now one of their featured case studies! Well done to all the pupils (past and present) for making our 💧Water Week💧 such a success!
😀

Click on the link to see the case study!


https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/ecoschools/water

Look At What The Postie Brought!

Our Eco Committee

WE DID IT!

A huge thank you to all the staff, pupils and parents for all their support and hard work! This is a fantastic achievement for the school.

Eco Friendly Decorations by P2/3

💚Sustainable Decorations!💚

Miss Baxter set her class the challenge of making eco friendly decorations using everyday objects which they recycled. Learning for sustainability in a real life context!
Have look at what they designed and made at home!

Festive Nieve and her snow globe! 

Gulshin with Santa's sleigh and an angel, all made by recycling used paper.

Made from girders?! Alyssa used the label from an Iron Brush bottle to decorate her gift!

Kian crafted his snow globe from a jam jar and made it sparkly by adding sequins to the water inside it!

Jessica used marshmallows to make her edible snowman.

Nevaeh made hers from an old lightbulb this tree decoration now sparkles  thanks to the glitter adorning it and the other bauble is decorated with bits of an old CD.

Lewis made an elf using a toilet roll and scraps of paper-he was quite keen to pull it like a cracker.

Maria's Santa is so sweet, don't you agree?

Plastic isn't that fantastic!

Leon in P7 chose Space Junk as his topic for his research task, rather alarming to hear how much rubbish is now floating in space ....

The coloured dots show the rubbish.

Leon's presentation






Inspired by Blue Planet 2, the Eco Committee start work on reducing plastic litter and raising awareness of how we can all reduce our plastic consumption. They hope to present their information to the school at an assembly in January.

Hoe! Hoe! Hoe! (Apologies to Santa!)

I had a spare afternoon in my diary withe the end of Forest School for 2017 and so a group of "volunteers" assembled and we blitzed the poly tunnel in and hour and a half! Weeding, pruning, harvesting and sweeping up done!  A fantastic effort and it looked so neat and tidy once it was rid of the old straggly crops. We even found some carrots, parsnips, spring onions and a cauliflower-our FIRST and only cauliflower!
We've left a couple of potatoes in place and a few spring onions and the recycled the rest of the foliage.

Before...

and after! Ta-dah!!!

Something is taking shape...

Mrs Thomas met with the Eco Committee and Pupil Council member today to share some rather exciting news with them. The children were given the chance to provide feedback on behalf of the school and asked many pertinent questions about this exciting venture. More to follow but until then our lips are sealed!