Help with Pre-School Allotment

loumac

If it's infant children, do you get the free fruit come through? You could start composting their fruit waste to be used on the allotment so that they could see a long term process in action.

You could get other children involved with something simple like a grow the tallest sunflower competition. Getting all the children involved in a design would be good too. There might be some good maths links to be made here.

Those children who study the water cycle could look at water collection and conservation.

Could the children sell their produce to the school canteen too? The profits being used for future purchases.

I'd definitely look into promotion and sponsorship. Perhaps a local gardening centre would lend you the tools?

Good luck anyway! It sounds fab!

PS-Check out eco schools on the web for advice!

quietheart

Thanks Loumac, great ideas there. Even if we just get the classes who've got kids involved in the project to collect their fruit leftovers it would be great. The school is huge and i think a lot of staff would turn their nose up to a load of rotting fruit hanging around!The kids can bring them with them on the day.
I'll be going next week full of ideas (even if they're not my own!)
Will have a peep at that website and thanks again!

loumac

rovers - We composted fruit waste at my last school and it was relatively easy to coordinate and not at all smelly. Each classroom had a mini bin that fruit was collected in daily and at the end of the day a monitor from each class would take it out and empty it straight into the main compost bin.

It might also be nice to have a wormery (buy one, make one, get one from freecycle?) as they would help to compost waste and are great when it comes to minibeast topics.

I think there is funding involved with getting eco schools status so apart from using their ideas, they are worth looking in to.

Happy to help!

quietheart

I'm about to go out but just noticed you're in birmingham too, was it a Birmingham school who composted their fruit? That sort of information helps methinks!
Will find out about eco schools tomorrow - exciting stuff!

loumac

Sorry for the delayed reply.

I'm in a Birmingham school at the minute and we're looking at introducing the same idea. I saw it first in a Redditch school.
Not an expert but our school are working on similar projects at present and I have a personal allotment so pm me if you want any info or if we can share ideas at all.

RAS

Have a look at the Garden Organic site - a whole section on thing that schools can do. They are based a Ryton, so not far from you anyway.

http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/organicgardening/schools.php?PHPSESSID=f8275af64f41e4b3c9543f26009a58ae

Also http://www.cowfiles.com/ has some brilliant stuff on bag gardens including a video presentation. Useful for introducing a number of topics.

quietheart

Loumac, can i ask did your old school go for the EcoSchool malarkey? If so does it make much effort?
It looks really exciting and I can see it working in my son's school. I help out and wince at the overflowing paper bins...
We've also just taken on our own allotment so I may well take you up on the pming for tips!
RAS will take a look at the links, I know Ryton, it's fab i'd forgotten about it so thanks for the reminder.
Thanks again folks!

loumac

Hey, we did eco schools. It does take some paperwork, I think you have to have evidence for what you're doing but you get an offical accredication and schools love to have awards! Recycling paper is definitely a minimum within schools - so much is wasted otherwise! Slightly off track I know.....!

cowboymum

Got my Seeds of Italy seed catalogue through and they will send a selection of seeds to schools for £2.50. These are seeds in date, but just faded packets etc that have been sent back from suppliers.

Website is;
www.seedsofitaly.com

Going to tell my school about it!

Amy

prettypennies

We are also looking at making better use of our school grounds and have started looking into Eco-school status. So I will be wathcing this thread with interest. There are some great ideas here already.

We already recycle paper. We are about to start composting hopefull along the same lines as Loumac.

My local council are offering bins from £8 so I might order some of these. Unless anyone knows of any special school offers?

We have five raised beds (made from breeze blocks about 3ft high and about 1.5m x 1.5m wide) which we are looking to make better use of. At the moment they have shrubs, weeds and copious amounts of cat poo in :mad: .

We are considering ideas such as a veg patch, wildflower bed, raised child safe pond etc.

The main issue at the moment is clearing the existing shrubs and keeping at the cats.

We are hoping to find a local organisation that will be able to give us some advice and maybe manpower.

Another problem we are going to have to bear in mind is vandals, Last year we planted some trees provided by the woodland trust. Each child in the class had there own tree with a name plate on. Vandals broke in and snapped all but 8 of them. The kids were gutted.
We are not about to be put off by a few mindless thugs though.