Hi everyone,

I hope you are enjoying these posts and that you are trying out some of the ideas I am putting on this page. Leave a comment to tell me how you are getting on.

Today I decided to share a great learning pack from the RSPCA with you. We have had visits in school from SSPCA officers over the years to teach us many things about how we can look after our furry and feathered friends. This pack that you can access with the link below will help you learn more about animals and I hope that you find it fun and interesting.

Scottish SPCA Adventure Tails Orange Activity Booklet

Miss Brooks

Hi to all the boys and girls of St. Albert’s Primary.

Each week, WWF (the World Wildlife Fund)  will be providing five engaging ways for you to connect with nature and learn more about our amazing planet. Their  themed weeks will include live learning events using this link:

our dedicated Facebook group

and  you can find out about these great resources on this page:

https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/love-nature

These learning events are a way  to join in with fun and interesting webinars with WWF experts, and there are links to their  popular educational materials. Just in case you miss any of these live events, you can revisit and access all content as and when you need to.

You will need to get an adult to join the Facebook group for you.

Miss Brooks

Hi again boys and girls,

Spring is a beautiful time of year. Everything has started growing again, the birds are making nests and butterflies are appearing after the long winter. If you are lucky enough to catch sight of a carefree butterfly or moth in your garden it is a reminder to take pleasure in the small things. Who doesn’t feel a sense of wonder when you see a beautifully patterned butterfly flitting across your garden or sitting on a flower in the park? However, like the rest of nature butterflies are struggling to cope in a world where the wildflowers that they depend on for nectar to survive are becoming a thing of the past. How can we help them survive for the future?

Luckily there is a great charity, Butterfly Conservation which is dear to my heart, who are working hard to help butterflies survive. Here are some of the things you can get involved in at home to save these beautiful creatures from extinction on the Butterfly Conservation website:

You can ask an adult to join you to help scientists find out where our butterflies are surviving and what types are around the country. You don’t even need to go far for this job. You can do this in your garden or out on a walk or in the park. I have the app on my phone and whenever I see a butterfly I record it using the ID chart in the app.

How to take part in three easy steps:

Ask an adult to sign up to take part. Go to: https://butterfly-conservation.org/how-you-can-help/fund-our-work/other-ways-to-help/send-us-your-butterfly-sightings

1. Sign up to become a Butterfly Conservation citizen scientist (Your parent will need to do this for you)
2. Download the free iRecord app to your phone (available from itunes and Google store)
3. Spot butterflies in your garden and record them on the app

This page will explain everything:

https://butterfly-conservation.org/butterflies/recording-and-monitoring

Miss Brooks

Hi boys and girls,

Would you like to take part in a challenge that helps charities?  The 2.6 challenge is open to all ages and encourages people to get active and be creative around the number 26 or 2.6.

Right now lots of charities are struggling. Many fundraising events in the UK have been postponed or cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and so charities  need more help than ever. This is a great way to raise some money to help them.

What do you do?  First pick a charity you would like to support. Then decide what you are going to do for your challenge. It must be based around the number 26 or 2.6. For example, you could walk for 2.6 miles with an adult, or throw and catch a ball 26 times. There are lots of ideas on https://www.twopointsixchallenge.co.uk/ 

Then you ask friends and family to sponsor you to complete your challenge or you can ask an adult to make a donation on your behalf to a charity. Keep Scotland Beautiful is an environmental charity and if you wish to donate the money you have raised to them, you can ask an adult to use this link:

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/donation-web/charity?charityId=1006479&stop_mobi=yes

There are other Eco charities that desperately need funds right now.For example WWF UK or S.S.P.C.A:

This link will take you to a page where you can see which charity you would like to support:

https://twopointsixchallenge.justgiving.com/get-involved

Good luck. Please let me know in the comments section what you are doing and for what charity.

Miss Brooks

Good morning boys and girls,

I hope you are getting out to enjoy the sunshine while we have it. I have been watching all the birds that visit the bird feeder at the bottom of my garden every day and I spotted two Goldfinches for the first time, so I went out and bought some Zinnia seeds (which they love) to see if I could get them to be more regular visitors. I also spotted an Orange tip butterfly and a Peacock butterfly flitting around in the garden. So beautiful.

As one of our subjects we are working on for our next Eco flag is Biodiversity we are trying to support the survival of nature and to increase the numbers and types of living things in our world. Sadly, due to impact of climate change, pollution, mining and deforestation the survival of living things is under threat like no other time in history. We can always do our bit to help the planet, which is our home, and even if we can’t do this right now in our school grounds, we can always do some things to play our part at home.

I will be adding more ideas over this next week for things you can do at home to help nature. Every little bit counts.

The RSPB or Royal Society for the Protection of birds has great learning resources online with activities that will help you learn more about the natural world. Here are some great ideas to do:

Take part in the RSPB Wild Challenge Award.  

Here is the link to the activity pages:

https://www.rspb.org.uk/fun-and-learning/for-families/family-wild-challenge/activities/

You probably already know that we take part every year in the RSPB schools birdwatch in January, but did you know that you can take part in this at home too. I do this every year watching and recording the numbers and types of birds that visit my garden and then sending the results to the RSPB, so they can monitor the survival of our birds. You can have a look at the results from this year’s survey using this link to see how our British bird species are doing:

https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/

If you have an outside space at home and you want to do something practical to help our feathered friends survive visit this page for some great ideas for how you can help:

https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/give-nature-a-home-in-your-garden/

Don’t forget to let me know how you got on with any of these activities on the comments page and take photos that you can bring in and show me when ewe get back to school. It will be good evidence towards gaining our next green flag.

Miss Brooks

Good morning boys and girls,

Here is a great project that you might like to get involved in for our school’s Eco Schools work.  Remember that you can do a bit each day and you don’t have to do it all on  any one day.

This link:

http://http://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/ecoschools/athome

will take you to a page where you can do some Eco Schools learning at home. Click on the green website address and then the blue link that appears and that should take you to the page.

One of the tasks I would like you to do is ‘Design a pocket garden’. Eco Schools are looking for exciting and unusual garden designs that use edible plants, plants that attract wildlife and will reuse something which would otherwise have been thrown away.

You will need to do a bit of research online for this to find out about  plants that can be eaten and those that are good for bees and butterflies and come up with ideas to use old things in your garden instead of throwing them out. Would you believe that we once re-used an old toilet as a plant pot in our very first Eco garden years ago and old welly boots to grow plants in? When we get back to school I will be asking for donations of old items like these that we could use for growing things in. There are lots of good ideas online for this sort of thing.

There are some great Eco resources online to help you.

Visit www.gardenforlife.org.uk for 9 downloadable ‘How to…’ guides for gardening and helpful links.

There are some great tips on Gardening with children from the BBC.

You can send your pocket garden designs to the Keep Scotland Beautiful website. You might even get your garden put on their website for all to see. Please take a photo of your designs and send them to me at my glow address:

gw11brooksantonia01@glow.sch.uk

Thanks and good luck with your designing.

Miss Brooks

Hi boys and girls,

Just to let you know that St. Albert’s Primary has adopted an elephant with WWF as part of our ongoing work on Biodiversity for our Eco Schools work. We will have a certificate to show that we are helping to support the survival of elephants in the wild at a time when their numbers are falling due to poachers and trophy hunters killing them. The Eco Committee hope to adopt some other animals with WWF later on this year.

If you would like to adopt an animal visit the WWF website to find out how. You will be sent a cuddly toy version of your adopted animal and a pack to tell you all about them and the money you send will be helping to protect them in the wild. Please speak to your parents first though as they would need to pay.

Miss Brooks