Netherthird Primary school has has a long standing working partnership with Netherthird Community Garden.
Ideally placed next to the school grounds the space was easily accessible and so utilised as part of ‘routine and expected’ learning. So that parents could give ‘informed consent’, the school issued an annual permission form and this allowed freedom to access the community garden whenever they wanted without the need for additional paperwork.
However since 2017 the whole school have been decanted into Greenmill Primary so visits to the garden have had to be reduced. This hasn’t stopped the eager staff though! Finding solutions to problems is their ‘forte’!
The school have continued to use the garden for science, gardening, literacy and maths. Recently in the September sun, the pupils from P7 accessed the garden to learn about map making, creating colourful representations of the garden for a Fairy Trail for visitors to use.
There are additional benefits to the maths and social studies learning outcomes that were covered though….Research on spending time in natural greenspace, has been shown to have benefits for both our mental and physical health. It was no surprise to staff therefore, that the children all had smiles on their faces and were full of energy at the end of a successful trip to the garden.
The pupils are fortunate to have a wide range of outdoor learning opportunities both in school grounds and in local greenspaces.
7 used team working skills to make scale models of the distance between planets. They used string, rulers and ping pong balls to help measure the display models.
