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

Hi to all the St. Albert’s Community. While we are all at home there are still things we can do to help the environment. Tomorrow night (Sat 28th) from 8.30-9.30 p.m. is EARTH HOUR. The St. Albert’s community takes part in this very worthwhile event every year to play our part in stopping environmental destruction.

More than a symbolic event, Earth Hour is a global environmental movement to stop the destruction of nature. It’s a great way to connect with people around the world and there are so many ways to take part at home.

At 8.30 p.m. on 28 March, take an hour to switch off your lights in solidarity with people worldwide.

Visit:

https://www.wwf.org.uk/things-to-do-home

for lots of great ideas for things to do during EARTH HOUR. Please tweet what you and your family do for Earth Hour or let us know in the comments what you got up to. Thank you.

Miss Brooks

Hi all,

At the end of last week, the boys and girls of Primary 4, Primary 4/5 and Primary 5 undertook a litter survey in our school grounds. There were not many children in and these boys and girls worked very hard to clear our grounds of every bit of rubbish that they could find and with great enthusiasm. We did two separate surveys, one in the Junior/Senior playground and Eco garden and the other in the Infant playground, the Storytelling area and the MUGA.

The results were interesting. This was the first litter survey we have undertaken where we found lots of things we have never found before. We found strange things like hats, a saucepan lid, a metal spoon, bubble wrap and an odd assortment of clothing as well as the usual categories like crisp packets and sweet wrappers.

We will repeat this survey again at at a later date after we have put in place some measures to combat our litter problem. This will help us to measure change. The results of the survey will be posted soon along with some data analysis the children can do at home on the figures.

Our school grounds were looking great at the end of the litter pick. Well done  to all the boys and girls who helped.  Here are the photos of our children hard at work.

Miss Brooks

We are hoping to arrange a Community Litter pick for the morning of Monday 30th March as part of our work towards our next Green Flag Award. Primary 4 will be involved in this and perhaps some other classes too. We need to get an idea of numbers who can come along to help out on the day and we would like to invite any parents (not limited to the P4 parents) who could spare some time that morning to join us. All equipment will be supplied by Glasgow City Council and  we would only be litter picking in the streets of Pollokshields. If you think you could give up an hour or so on Monday 30th March please contact the school office and let them know you are coming by the end of next week.

Thanks Miss Brooks and the Eco Committee of St. Albert’s Primary

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Following our Roadside Litter Assembly on Monday, the Eco Committee will be running a Roadside Litter competition for those pupils who wish to take part. Those pupils who have expressed an interest in taking part  will be bringing home a sheet with a large speech bubble on it.

Primary 4-7 should be able to come up with a colourful caption to write in the speech bubble giving a good reason why litter should be picked up and put in the bin or carried home and not dropped on the street. The caption can be made by hand or designed on a computer and stuck into the speech bubble.

Primary 1-3 pupils should be able to draw and colour in a picture showing the consequences of dropping litter on the roadside, especially for wildlife.

The closing date for the competition will be the 6th December and the Eco Committee will judge the competition entries. Prizes will be awarded for the best three entries at the assembly on the 9th December.

Miss Brooks

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Having gained our 5th Green flag award in July, we now set out on a new Eco journey over the next two years to work towards earning our 6th Green flag award. We now have our new Eco Committee which includes members from P1-7. The P4-7 pupils had to complete a job application form if they were interested in applying to be members of the committee. From these we selected those pupils who demonstrated a keen interest in helping the planet and showed that they would be dedicated members of our committee.

We have now completed our Environmental review from the Eco Schools Scotland website which helps us to determine what we need to prioritise in our Eco work over the next two years. This helps us to formulate an action plan to address areas that we want to work on.

Every two years we work on 3 of ten topics from the Eco Schools Scotland website. Litter is mandatory every two years as it is our responsibility to ensure our school grounds are kept free of litter. Failure to do so can incur a fine. The other two subjects we have chosen to work on for this journey are Biodiversity and School grounds. These are closely linked under the Sustainable Development goal Life on Land.

We hope to ask for your involvement this year as we tackle these subjects. We would like to undertake community litter picks involving children and parents and would welcome any ideas for fundraising as we wish to replace our old and rotting raised beds in the school Eco garden with new ones. Our aim is to have one for each class to grow their own plants in either for Science topics or for cooking purposes which can link to Literacy and Maths work in a fun and enjoyable way.

One of the ways we have been successful in raising funds so far is through recycling old clothes with the Rag Bag company. You may have noticed a large green recycling bin at the entrance to the infant playground on Maxwell Drive.  Please feel free to deposit old and unwanted clothes, paired shoes, belts and bags in there. When the company collects these we are sent a cheque which us paid into our Eco fund and this provides us with much needed means to donate to charities, purchase gardening equipment, pay for buses to take pupils to environmental education events and to improve our school grounds especially for nature for example by purchasing nest boxes and bird feeders.

Thank you

Miss Brooks and the Eco Committee of St. Albert’s Primary.

Monday 17th June is as you know Sport’s Day at St. Albert’s Primary. In the afternoon there will be  a Pledges for the planet stall run by the Eco Committee where you can show you care by signing any of 20 Eco pledges  where you promise to make changes at home to live in a more sustainable way. Please have a look and see if you can make at least one lifestyle change to make our world a better place.

As one of our Eco topics is Water we decided to try and save water from being wasted in our bathrooms. The Eco Committee made posters on the computers and put them up in the pupil’s toilets over the sinks to remind pupils to ensure taps are not left on wasting water. Our janitor told us that taps being left on by pupils has been a problem for a while and that is how most water is wasted in our school. Pupils now also know that they have to report any taps that are faulty and drip constantly when they are off, so they can be fixed. We also asked the council to install an outdoor tap for us on the end wall of the school nearest to the Eco garden. This was because we needed to fill up watering cans indoors and lots of the water was spilt on the floor carrying them to the garden. Now we don’t have any spillages and all the water gets to the plants. Here is the poster the Eco Committee made.