- Telephone: 01282 771146
- Email: office@st-john.lancs.sch.uk
St John the Baptist Roman Catholic Primary School Love One Another
Calendar Dates
- Christmas Lunch and Jumper day 18th December 2024
- End of Advent Mass 19th December 2024 at 09:15
- School Closes for Christmas 3.15pm 20th December 2024
Nature Club
Skills
Today our nature group have been creating forest bogarts using the knot skills they have been learning and decorated their head dresses with flowers and leave. With the 2 litre bottles we have been recycling Miss Armstrong has been showing the children how to create colourful wind chimes which will decorate their sensory garden. Noah brought his pet catapiller Colin and we released him back into the wild. Good luck Colin!
Knots and lashings
Nature badges
Plans have been coming together for our sensory garden and many seeds have been sown and the children have been pleased to see them grow. The weather has improved and we have been able to spend more time outside. This week the children learnt a couple of new skills, hitch knots and lashing to bind together sticks to create practical and fun items. There was also the opportunity to create nature badges to link them as a team. These took some practice but many achieved it for themselves. These small achievable task have been great for their confidence and hopefully will encourage them to take part in future tasks.
spring
seeds
Nature group have been lucky enough to get a free seed growing kit from the Innocent smoothie company. from this, we learnt about organic coconut husk compost and how to use it and the conditions that seeds need to grow. The group all took turns preparing a seeds new home and selecting a seed they would like to grow. Some of these seeds they took home to nurture themselves and share with their family and the rest have been shared amongst the classes.
We we discussed the turn of the season and what change is happening around us in spring. Spending time in our beautiful secret garden, we enjoyed the good weather and had fun with a scavenger hunt to identify the features of spring.
Our eco bricks are coming along nicely and some are being returned to year 4. We talked about choosing clean safe materials to put into the eco bricks and the process of squashing the contents carefully down with a wooden spoon or a stick to create density and strength. The children were interested to hear stories of how these eco brinks are used around the world to create houses and furniture. A common practice with these bricks to write a positive intention on them to be read by people in the future and the children were keen to do this with theirs.
Upcycling continued
Nature group have been talking amongst themselves about how they can do their bit to recycle in their school community and how we could use these resources in our school to grow flowers and vegetables. The children came up with some fantastic ideas of plastics they could re use and we asked people at home to send them in. In our after school nature club we have made vertical hanging planters using 2 litre plastic bottles and plastic straws. We enjoyed this activity and have planted lettuce and strawberry plants, we will make lots more of these. The children have taken home more 2 litre bottle to fill with waste plastic and paper so that we can use these as eco bricks to create ourselves more growing structures.
In this time of seasonal change and growth, we had lots of discussions about ourselves and what we would like to change or develop through the year. Some lovely suggestions were made such as.....To find a new hobby.....To have more patience with my sister...….To think before I speak...…..To give more compliments. We wrote these intentions on brightly coloured ribbons and tied them to a beautiful blossom tree in the serenity garden. We talked about this being an ancient tradition and that the children could use the ribbons to remind them of the hopes they have right now and let them prompt them to make choices towards these hopes.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein
Upcycling
Nature club have been considering all the things we throw away from our house and ways we could reuse them in our gardening projects. The children were very creative with their ideas and many of them we will recreate over the year. We decided to work with the seasons and first of all help the birds in the cold weather by making bird feeders which we hung from the trees in the serenity garden.
As Spring is fast approaching we have been talking about what vegetables we would like to grow because we like eating them or because we have never seen the plants they come from, with this in mind we made some biodegradable pots that we will start our vegetable seeds in.
The club has registered with the Royal Horticultural Society and will be using their resources to develop our growing area and we will be entering their awards scheme with our successes. Nature club has also joined "Grow Wild" the Kew gardens initiative and they have sent us lots of lovely wild flower seeds to encourage wildlife, the group are excited to see these grow and we will be plating them out as soon as storm Gareth passes.
Living Things
This week, nature club have been looking at the impact in the change of weather on our surroundings. We have considered how this might affect our local birds and insects and our trees and plants. We recycled some plastic to make miniature greenhouses to protect our daffodil bulbs from the icy weather.
This week the nature club have been learning about different groups of living things. We have been playing games and using flow charts to help us identify which groups various living things belong to through their features. We have been learning about vertebrates and invertebrates and which creatures belong in these categories.
Trees
Nature club learning all about species in the area they live and developing skills to identifying trees through repetition, games and art. These children have been learning their names, uses and fruits they might produce. If they name 5 types of tree they get a prize. The art work they have produced uses items we found in local woodland.
Berries
In this berry squishing activity the children were given the opportunity to explore how plants disperse seeds via animals. We looked at seasonal local fruits blackberries, hawthorns, rosehips, elderberries ect and discussed where animals would find them and who would eat them.
Local Birds
Nature club are spending time this half term learning about birds native to where they live. We are linking up with the RSPB and their national bird survey. The young people have been learning to identify local birds through games and art and have been encouraged to watch birds at home and report back what they see so that we can contribute to a wider survey. The group has discussed the challenges birds face in winter and we have planned to make feeders and bird boxes.
Today at the lunchtime nature club the young people planted daffodils that we can enjoy next Spring when they are ready. We learnt about the best times for planting and the significance of this particular flower.
"The plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" - Audrey Hepburn
This week the nature club has been continuing to learn about wild birds that they would see around them in Lancashire. Through games they have learnt about their habitat and features and with art they have appreciated their beauty and looked closely at photos to draw them using oil pastels.