The Eco committee have been busy making bird feeders for around the school. We would like to encourage more wildlife into our school grounds by providing a delicious little treat for the animals during the winter, when food can be scarce. Hopefully we will see a variety of birds and different animals making use of our feeders.
The ingredients!
Mixing all the ingredients together – mmm! 🐦
Hard work is messy work!
We noted the ingredients we used and the method for making the feeders so anyone else in our class could try building their own feeder at home.
P7 had a great time exploring and sketching the Barrhead Water Works with resident artist, James Gow, as part of a design workshop. The P7 pupils will use their sketches and photographs to design an installation or sculpture to brighten up the community garden. Outdoor Learning at it’s best!
The children had their own sketch pad to capture what they saw and to use their imagination.
Busy sketching.
The children using their photography skills to capture good scenes.
‘Sketching in pen feels totally different but I like it – I’m trying hard not to make a mistake!’
The Eco Committee worked with our dinner ladies to cook soup from our home-grown pumpkins for lunch today. We cooked curried pumpkin and lentil soup and roasted pumpkin seeds which were so popular that they sold out! We love eating home-grown food.
Scooping out the pumpkin seeds.
Working with Susan, our dinner lady, to prepare the pumpkins for cooking.
Today was the day our Eco Committee could finally harvest their pumpkins for Halloween! We cannot believe how big our pumpkins have grown over the last few months. Lucy, who originally planted the seedlings in May, was amazed at the different shapes and colours of the pumpkins and managed to find her own pumpkin in the patch. Thank you to Barrhead Water Works for a great afternoon!
We loved meeting other children from the St Mark’s Eco Committee and McCready’s Family Centre. We all decided to meet up again in the future to work on new projects together.
The Water Works featured our work on their website.
The Eco Committee joined forces with Cross Arthurlie’s Junior Road Safety Officers to organise a Walk to School Day on Friday 28th October.
Pupils felt that there were too many cars and traffic around the school and encouraged people to get together with their friends to walk all or part of the way to school. The Eco Committee hopes this will reduce pollution around the school and ease traffic jams.
Our Bags of Help funding is contributing towards a gazebo. Today work has started on our beautiful outdoor classroom!
Thank you to Scotplay for their great work.
The Eco Committee were delighted to receive their Silver Award from the Woodland Trust’s Green Tree School Award Scheme.
The school had previously received a Bronze Award for the work they were already doing.
Recently the Eco Committee and some P7 volunteers read the story of ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ to remind the children how important trees are to our planet. The committee also went on a woodland walk to learn about trees and shrubs, and created natural artwork to receive extra points towards their silver award.
The committee have ordered trees to arrive in March. The committee hopes to host a community day to rejuvenate the school grounds.
We were very proud of our Cross Arthurlie representatives who presented at the Pupil Council Meeting at OLM Primary School today. Kirsty-Ann and Evan shared the work of the Eco committee with other pupil representatives from all schools in East Renfrewshire. They had a wonderful day meeting new people and getting the chance to share their achievements.
“I really liked the homemade gingerbread men at break!” said Evan.
