Eco Club
We love caring for our school gardens and our environment. In Eco club we are very busy all year with Eco activities and we are excited about sharing what we get up to throughout the year.
This year we are working towards our Forest School Award and our Eco Green Flag award. It's a very busy year!
Forest School Christmas Tree
The Forest School Christmas Tree
The children all helped to decorate the forest school Christmas tree, only using natural materials or things helped our environment.
P6/7 researched Garden birds and made toilet roll bird feeders. They made Christmas tree decorations out of willow and wool.
P5/6 made star decorations out of nails, wooden disks and wool
P3 made leaf garlands by collecting Autumn leaves and sewing them together.
P1/2 made stars using willow sticks.
Litter Presentation
The Eco Council went around each class and reminded them about the importance of recycling all our litter. They wanted to make sure that each class had two bins- one for recycling and one for waste. They told each class what could be recycled and what needed to be thrown into the general waste bins.
They gave each class an information sheet to remind them of what is recyclable. In the afternoon the Eco-Club made new signs for everyone’s bins.
RSPB Big Schools bird watch
Every January we get involved in the RSPB big schools birds watch. We feed the birds and then we go on a bird watch. We have to be very quiet. We count how many different birds we can find. Sometimes we can't see them but we can hear them. We using an app called Merlin to identify the different bird songs. We send off our results to the RSPB. They need to know which birds are doing well in our area and if any numbers are declining. We love to look after our birds in Maguiresbridge Primary School.
Climate Change and Litter Pick
Emmett from FODC came and told us all about Climate Change. He talked about all the ways we can help our planet. Afterwards we went on a litter pick around the school grounds. The wind had blown in lots of litter from outside.
Birds Nests
In Forest School we all worked in teams to make birds nests. We had to think about how to camouflage the nest, where to position the nest and how to make the nest cosy yet strong. We talked about what birds might live in our nests. In P5-7 we had to work out the circumference of the nest using the diameter and pi! A very tricky maths challenge!
Cash For Clobber
We are collecting bin bags of old clothes to raise money for school. The more bags we collect the more money we will raise! We can help the environment by taking part in Cash For Clobber. By re-using and recycling unwanted clothes, shoes and material we can reduce the amount of material going into landfill. Did you know that thousands of tonnes of clothing are sent to our landfills every year in the UK? This is a big problem for the environment. Cookstown textile recyclers use special machines. Recycled clothes are sorted, cleaned, and processed into new fibres that can be used to make new clothing, insulation, and more.
Tree Planting
Past and new members of the eco council were delighted to welcome Sarah Jane from Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, who came to help us plant new trees in our Thomas Trail. We identified a very wet, muddy area that needed trees and we also felt that we needed more trees along the hedge. We planted 30 young trees- a variety of native species including birch, silver birch, Scots pine, crab apple, wild cherry and oak trees.
Exploring shadows
We had so much fun in Science club finding out all about shadows and how they change through the day.
We worked in groups to create our own shadow puppets. We made up our own shadow puppet tales for book week! It was so much fun!
Investigating Magnets
We are enjoying finding out all about magnets and doing investigations with them in science club. We had to investigate which materials are magnetic. We had to investigate which ends of the magnet repel or attract.
