The eco committee has been busy planning the Fairtrade Fortnight.

The Fairtrade Fortnight runs from the 27th February to 10th March.

Whole school events include

• Pancake breakfast on 3rd March – Open to all parents, friends and businesses.
• Bonus house points for Fairtrade snacks!
• Fairtrade assembly by Eco committee on 24th February
• Fairtrade Tuck shop everyday.

Each class will also be learning about how Fairtrade helps people across the world and applying this to their writing, ICT, Health and Wellbeing and homework.

We are currently applying for a bags for help funding from Tesco for up to £5,000.

The funding is to promote productive use of outdoor spaces in the school and to improve the range of outdoor education opportunities we can provide.

Through discussion with some of our eco reps we have identified areas of the school that could be improved.

For example, we would like to try and get a climbing/bouldering wall put into the school, we would like to get some more bee keeping equipment and possibly some fruit trees!

Here is some of the areas that we identified that we could improve!

We have had our first Eco meeting of the year.

We welcomed all the new representatives and discussed the responsibilities for the upcoming year.

We also planned the eco wall and what we could display on it this year to show off our work.

At our next meeting we will discuss how to perform the eco audit and look at the impact of the eco active day on Friday 14th October.

We are very excited to have a special guest presenting at our assembly this Friday. We are looking forward to welcoming Warren Bader CEO  of Plan Bee to our assembly & finding out all about his job & the important role of honey bees.

As Primary 5 have been learning about bees, they will have the opportunity to adopt & name a bee! We are hoping that they will receive their adoption certificates at the assembly on Friday. Perhaps they will also be able to showcase their ‘Bee Movie’ to Warren!

You can find out more information about Plan Bee here

Plan Bee Ltd

We have just had confirmation that the number of pens we sent off to be recycled totalled 2,554! That’s a lot of pens that otherwise would have gone to landfill. Well done everyone! TerraCycle will send us a cheque for £30 for all of our hard work 🙂

This afternoon the P3/4 Eco Reps visited all of the classes & the nursery to collect the pen recycling boxes. As a school, we no longer throw our old pens in the bin , we keep them to recycle.

We now have enough pens (15kg) to ask UPS to come & collect them. Every pen is worth 2p – I wonder how much money we will raise with this box?

The Eco Committee are running a competition to design a bin for the school playground. The design should be bright & colourful with a litter slogan or message. Entry forms are available from Mrs Thomson & the winning design will be chosen by the Eco Committee & made into a bin for the playground. The closing date for the competition is 29.01.16 – Good Luck!

This afternoon the Eco Committee met to have their monthly meeting. Today we discussed:

1. The Outdoor classroom has been repaired so hopefully in the next few days we will be able to attach the plastic sides to allow classes to use the outdoor classroom during the winter months.

2. The Committee successfully took part in the Wrigley Litter Less Campaign & have now received the last instalment of £300. Mrs Thomson asked what they would like to put the money towards – a new character bin or organise a ‘design your own bin’ competition.  The committee voted to hold a competition for children to design a bin to be created for the playground. Watch this space!

3. As one of the new topics is ‘Water’ the children we looking for ways of saving water in school. One possible way is by installing Hippo Bags in the cisterns of the toilets. After some investigation it appears the bags are not too expensive. The Committee agreed they would like to trial Hippo Bags in some of the toilet cisterns. http://www.hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk/index.html

4. While thinking about our Action Plan for 2015-16, some committee members expressed they would like to be able to be more active during wet playtimes. Mrs Thomson showed the committee Indoor Recess on a website called GoNoodle. The children agreed this is something they would like to be able to do. Mrs Thomson agreed to speak to teachers about using the programme during wet playtimes.

We had our Green Flag assessment visit this morning & I’m very pleased to tell you that we have been awarded our next green flag! The assessor was very impressed & praised the pupils, staff & parents for all of their hard work & effort.

The children from the Eco Committee showed the assessor around the school & playground & spoke very confidently to her about how they are involved in decision making, assemblies & class work.

Well done!

Update! We have just been given our new date for our Green Flag Assessment Visit. The assessment will take place on Monday 23rd November & will involve the pupils from the current Eco Committee as well as members from last years Eco Committee. On the day the assessor will meet with the committee, tour the school & the playground before visiting the Nursery, Primary 1/2 & Primary 5.