The Eco Committee meet every Tuesday morning at playtime in the ICT suite. We share ideas, make plans for events, make posters, organise litter picking, keep our notice board up to date and much more.
We apply for our next Green Flag in February 2014 – to find out more about Eco Schools, please follow this link
http://www.ecoschoolsscotland.org/
Our Eco Action Days in February were enjoyed by everyone and were a great learning experience for the whole school. Here is the newsletter which was written by P7 pupils to tell everyone about what we did at our Action Days:
Dear Parents / Guardians,
On 18th and 19th February, your child took part in the Viewlands Primary’s Eco Action Days! You will probably all know a bit about these days already, but now we shall tell you more….. What we did, who helped, feelings about these days and much, much more! If we were to summarise the Eco Action Days, we’d all say that they were – PHENOMENAL!
The theme this year was “Friendly Faces” and to reflect this, Viewlands pupils arrived in the playground wearing yellow and orange! If you had seen all the smiles on those two days, you would have agreed that the theme was very appropriate! We all managed to squeeze ourselves into the assembly hall and our epic days started off with an Assembly where the whole school – everyone from Nursery up to Primary 7 – were put into groups. Mrs Allan, Mrs Wallace and Mrs Sands greeted us as we got into our groups: surprisingly, everybody had remembered to dress down and it was as if the sun had sprinkled it’s magical yellow and orange rays over Viewlands Primary that morning, and winter’s frigid, ugly weather was banished from Perth leaving summer’s spectacular feeling to spread its love across the world. The assembly was short and snappy because we were all so keen to get on with our activities which included:
I-Bike smoothies – we chose what we put in our smoothie and Miss Wilson made us cycle for our lives to create it and most of us were rewarded with a delicious drink to quench our thirst… “The fruit smoothies were scrumptious!”
Relaxation – we lay down and Miss Oliver read to us about Aladdin’s Carpet and Peter Pan’s Flying Powers and probably just about 50% of us fell asleep! A lot of the P7s came back at lunchtime for an extra session – that’s how good it was!
Table Tennis – Ping! Pong! Whack! Thwack! – that was the professional’s game – our games sounded more like – “Thwack! Crunch! – We need a new ball!” Many people thought this was great fun!
Gardening – This was one of our favourite activities. We were making the school environment more attractive. “We like picking out the weeds!” said some of the younger ones. And the litter picking made the playground and surrounding area much tidier too – pupils from Fairview School came down and joined in. Neighbouring residents were happy to see us busy working for the community too.
Fitness – Everyone thought this was fun but it was also very tiring! We did skipping, star jumps and hurdles but the wall squats were THE hardest thing to do! Miss Dunnett organised the fitness, turned the music up really loud and she joined in and raced against us when we were doing shuttle runs!
Circle Time Groups – Mrs Moir led this activity – we passed around a miniature toy elephant named “Popcorn” and we could only talk when we had a hold of Popcorn. This encouraged us to talk and listen to others and it helped our confidence as well.
Football – Mr Munro helped us to practise skills such as dribbling and passing and we played lots of matches against different people. Even the girls were saying “This is fun – football is not just for boys!”
Board Games – “These were fantastic – I got very competitive!”
Golf – A top class activity! “This was my favourite activity for a time….. untiI I discovered my sister’s group were beating mine. Typical!”
Wii Games – As we arrived, Mrs Stewart greeted us and told us what we had to do, beginning with puzzling maths games and building up to the Wii.
Some people went to the inter-school cross country event – it was really tough. First we had to sign in and we watched other people race – the P6 girls, the P6 boys, the rural schools, the P7 boys (in which Conall came 12th and Mrs Gellatly’s son, Hamish, came 1st!) and then, after our snacks, the P7 girls started to warm up.
Bang! The klaxon blew to start things off! All the worries flooded away….concentrate on the race. What was the advice we had been given? “Stay to the right hand side – it is slightly longer but nobody goes there. It is a good way to get out of the ‘herd’”
I managed to push through the crowds to the edge and sprinted….By the time I got round the racecourse, I was already out of breath, not good, I was hardly half way round the track. “Ok, you need to pace yourself now.”
“Oh no, here comes the hill. No more walking now. Oh, it’s not that big, I’m up already!”
After cross country, we went back to school and told everyone how well we had done.
We also had a lunch box challenge where you put your rubbish in a bin bag and it got weighed at the end to see how wasteful the school was. We did well on using re-usable tubs instead of tinfoil and clingfilm. Well done, everyone!
There were 6 activities each day for us to do – no wonder we were exhausted when we got home! We didn’t think we could have picked better days for our Action Days – the sun was shining – we picked the sunniest days in February!
Rag Bag Recycling of clothes – This was fantastic! There were so many bags filled with clothes, shoes and textiles to raise funds for using on Eco projects, such as bird feeding, gardening and playground improvements. We have raised over £250 from the Rag Bags and the Rag Bin which sits in the school park – please keep those clothes coming in!
On the Monday evening after school, there was a disco. Mr ET helped us to party the night away and everyone really enjoyed it.
At the end of each day, we had some reflection time to remember what we had done that day and find out who had enjoyed it and who didn’t. Overall, everybody enjoyed two first rate days and said it was the best possible way to spend time before the mid-term holiday. Some quotes were “Best days ever” and “I really enjoyed it!”
A huge thank you must go to Tesco (Crieff Road) and Morrisons for their donations for the smoothies, to pupils from Fairview School for helping with the gardening and litter pick, to Scott Taylor of Westbank Nurseries for helping us install our benches for outdoor learning and to all parents who helped during the days and also at the Monday evening discos. We would also like to thank Mrs Allan, Mrs Wallace, Mrs Sands, Miss Brown and the Eco Committee for organising this event and to all the teachers who helped. We are upset we won’t be here to do it all again next year but we know the P6s can’t wait to have their turn at leading. Thank you for your support!
(And thank you to Primary 7 pupils for their contributions to this Newsletter!)
