This week’s activities

As some of you will know, we are currently engaged in Kent County Council’s Education for Sustainable Development Award scheme. Our ethos at the setting is to re-use, re-purpose and recycle as much as possible. We take care of our local environment, consider our impact on the local wildlife, compost our waste food, grow some of our own fruit and vegetables and conserve energy where we can. Our aim is to inform and educate the children (in simple, age appropriate ways) about taking care of the world for their future. This week, the children have been engaging in some simple activities around taking care of the natural world by doing some ‘litter picking’.

A group of children went on a walk around the School site; the playground and the fields. They noticed the litter that was on the ground, caught in undergrowth, tangled in branches. They eagerly picked the litter up and put it in a bag, discussing what the litter was – mainly crisp packets, sweet wrappers, drinks bottles, etc. They thought about why it shouldn’t be left in the environment, with one child commenting that “we pick up litter otherwise it’s all dirty”. Another went on to say “I can smell rubbish over here”. They talked about the harm litter can do to wildlife and where it should be put so that the natural world is not harmed by it. They brought their collection back to the Pre-school – there was quite a lot – and explained to the other teachers and children what they had been doing and why.

The following day, more children took part in creating a poster of some of the items they had collected. First of all, they sorted out the rubbish from their collection into piles of different objects. The children noticed that the rubbish smelt bad! They looked at the symbols on the packaging to see if they could be recycled, separating them into piles. As we have our own crisp packet recycling bin at the Pre-school, the children looked at the symbol on the back of the packet, discovering that teracycle means it can be recycled but only at special sites. The children concluded that “litter looks messy and we need to look after where we live”. Very wise.

There are photos for you to view on our website, www.anthonyroperpreschool.co.uk, and our Facebook page.

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

The Pre-school Team