Environmental Learning for Schools

“Trees, Leaves, Birds and Bees”

We offer curriculum enhancing environmental learning projects to local primary and secondary schools. Making use of our community garden, we are able to offer extra-curricular activities and projects around a wide variety of environment related topics including: bio-diversity, food growing, recycling, habitats, life cycles and all aspects of bees and bee-keeping.

We are able to deliver projects and workshops in a single session or over a term. It’s negotiable, depending on the needs of the school.

Our classes are usually targeted towards primary school age children, however, we are happy to talk to secondary schools, as well as other youth groups to discuss their needs. For example, we have previously worked with Deptford Green’s Dyslexia Unit, with participants developing a wide range of skills and experience including garden maintenance, food growing, taking care of bee hives, ground works and pond maintenance, in addition to a range of very real outcomes such as increased self-confidence, team working skills and time management.

 

    

Some feedback from participants about what they had learnt from our activities:

“Dear Diary – First we learnt about swarms with Camilla. We did an example of one colony went in a swarm. One coloney was left behind and the ones who are left behind make a new queen. After that we did the waggle dance. Then with Jill we learnt about decomposers and detritivores. And then we went into the garden to discovery decomposer and detritivores for ourselves. Fungi and woodlice are decomposers and detritivores in the garden, there are others too.”Phillipa 

“Today we learnt about habitats and earthworms. There is an earthworm in another part of the world that can be up to 3 metres long. Earthworms are really important to make good soil. I worked with Caitlin to find earthworms and we found lots small ones and big ones”. Keana

“Today we went to Besson Street Community Garden to learn about Recycling, Reuse, reduce and repurpose. We looked at what you can make if you recycle and repurpose things. You can make houses, bins, goblets, notebooks, umbrellas, radios, pencil cases and bags. There was picture frame made from recycled paper made from elephant dung!” Christopher 

With Camilla today we learnt about hornets, wasps, honey bees and bumble bees. We learnt that hornets also feed on bees! This kind of hornet might come to England. With Jill we learnt about birds. Everyone has seen the blackbird in the garden and it has one of the best songs. We found out that robins are very territorial and can be vicious. We saw the white peacock with it’s tail on display it was massive.” Oliver

  

Please call us to find out more or to explore what we can do together to add value to your school curriculum. Call Jill Mountford on 020 7639 7605 or email: jill.mountford@nxgtrust.org.uk

Frogs in our pond – Spring 2017