Otley All Saints CE Primary School Blog

Alongside schools and community organisations  throughout the UK,  members of  Otley All Saints Eco Team joined ‘The Big Tidy Up’.

 Although the event focused on 23rd April, St George’s Day, many groups have been out and about in their local community ahead of the day!  As Nature Club had recently checked out our school grounds for unwanted litter, we decided to concentrate our efforts on some of the pathways nearby.

Here is a photograph of the team in action.

Sadly, by the end of our tidy up, our bag was quite full of items such as discarded wrappers, juice containers and cigarette packets!

More information can be found from the following link:

http://www.thebigtidyup.org/default.aspx

Well done to our Eco Team for taking the lead on raising awareness – and cleaning up!

Groundwork recently supplied us with an exciting ’box of tricks’ which included a fun game and some more serious energy monitors.

 The latter, will allow us to monitor which appliances in school use a lot of electricity and then to consider which should be put on timers, (or even better, switched off!), to further reduce our consumption of electricity.

The wind up game required a steady hand

Reading the monitor was quite tricky, but it did provide some useful information about electricity consumption and carbon emissions.

With the assistance of Groundwork, children in Nature Club have been adding to our collection of desirable residences for minibeasts.

One carefully placed spider shelter….

…… covered in sticks …….

…… is now awaiting occupants.

As Year 5 have just discovered, prolonged freezing weather seems to be just the ticket for  successful bird watching!

This week, from the warmth of our class ‘hide’, we have observed a surprising variety of birds visiting the feeders near the classroom. In just one hour of continuous observations some children recorded the following ‘most number of each species seen together at the same time’: 1 coal tit, 2 dunnocks, 2 great tits, 3 green finches, 3 woodpigeons, 2 blackbirds, 3 blue tits, 3 chaffinches, 7 house sparrows, 2 robins, 1 song thrush, 6 starlings, 3 bull finches, 4 reed buntings and 2 red kites.

 

A big thank you to one of our parents, Mr Hind, for his help with the bird watch!

Our records have now been posted on the RSPB’s Big School’s Birdwatch website.

Follow the link:

http://www.greatplanthunt.org/

Otley All Saints currently feature in the photo of the week.

An unobtrusive box arrived in my classroom this morning with an amazing surprise hidden inside. Otley All Saints School is the regional winner in ‘The Great Plant Hunt’, which was organized by Kew Gardens and the Wellcome Trust in recognition of the Darwin 200 celebrations.

Some of the team with our prizes!

Many thanks to everyone at the ’Great Plant Hunt’ for providing us with excellent resources. We thoroughly enjoyed being ‘Darwin’s Investigators’ and following in the footsteps of such a great scientist.

 Follow this link to find out more!

http://www.greatplanthunt.org/news

As signed up members of the the Breathing Spaces network, Nature Club were determined to complete their Autumn Term 09  ’Do One Thing’ challenge – to get tree planting. So we duly requested a free rowan sapling from Breathing Spaces and waited.

It arrived last week just in time to be planted during our meeting on Friday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/autumn09/

As part of ‘The Great Plant Hunt’, and along with many other Year 5 children across the UK, we are following the life cycle of  our local daisies. We are collecting the seeds from fruiting daisies and processing it in our seed bank. We intend to send the processed seeds to Kew Gardens where they will be analysed by scientists.

Firstly, we cordoned off a square metre of land to protect the daisies from the mowers!

 Then we began to watch.

 On a daisy hunt!

 Look closely and you will see a fruiting daisy hiding amongst the grass.

 Collecting seeds from the wildlife area.

Follow this link to find out more about The Great Plant Hunt!

http://www.greatplanthunt.org/

Children in the Green Check group have been calculating our monthly energy use and recording the information on a spreadsheet. 

This chart shows our electricity consumption since 2006. The blue bar is showing our electricity consumption this year. Do you think we will achieve our aim of reducing our consumption this year? We should do – if EVERYONE remembers to switch off!

 The next chart shows our gas consumption. Gas is used to heat the school and cook food. Again, the blue bar shows this year’s consumption.

Our new boiler seems to be paying its way already!

After reading an article in Watch Word (a magazine produced by Wildlife Watch) about setting up a window box nature reserve, Nature Club decided to have a go too.

 

Nature club’s mini reserve!

According to Watchword, the idea for the original windowbox was inspired by the volcanic island of Surtsey near the south coast of Iceland. This island first appeared above sea level in the 1960s and has been closely observed by scientists ever since. The scientists are hoping to learn more about how plants and animals first colonise land. The author of the article wondered what would happen if he set up a windowbox with peatfree compost, a stone, a log and a small ‘pond’ of freshwater and then left it alone to see which plants and animals would arrive first.

He now has a miniture nature reserve!

Admiring our reserve!

Wondering what might turn up!

A spider already!

 What next?