For the environmental teams at Huntingdale Primary School, Term 3 really is our time to shine! Sustainability is the concept of inquiry for all students across our school community. We are excited to share our recent news and goals as we tackle this inquiry concept head-first!
The environmental committee comprises Holly Small, Hisae Hatigan and myself (Monika Herrmann).
Garden Club
Hisae Hatigan leads the weekly Garden Club made up of grade 3/4 students. Signs have been created to help identify the growing plants in each garden bed and, additionally, to discourage members of our community from stepping on the plants. The regular collection of food scraps from classrooms continues to allow our worm farm to grow. These are well on their way to providing rich and nutritional soil to our growing plants. A big thank you to our parent volunteers who assist in the maintenance of these gardens and for sharing their gardening ‘know-how’ with our students.
Waste Warriors
Tuesday lunchtimes, I meet with a team of very enthusiastic grade two students who, together, make up the “Waste Warriors”. As a team, we are working towards promoting sustainable practices at Huntingdale Primary School. We continue to complete bin audits to check whether staff and students are disposing of their rubbish into the correct bins – general waste, commingled (recycling) and compost bins. We are launching a “Waste Winners” competition to further encourage classes to work together towards appropriate waste management. The winning classroom of each week will be announced on Mondays at assembly. As the term progresses, the Waste Warriors will look at energy consumption and identify ways our school can use energy more sparingly.
Rain Water Garden
Holly Small is looking to investigate rain water gardens with the grade 5/6 environmental leaders. These students will present ideas explaining the benefits of rain water gardens to the school.
Plastic Bottle Cap Lids
You may have heard of a grand project we hope will kick off in the coming weeks involving the collection of plastic bottle caps/lids/tops. The end goal is to create an art mural using collected plastic bottle caps which shows the cultural diversity of our school. For example, pictures of flags, nature, foods, traditional dress, arts etc. which symbolise the amazing our school’s amazing cultural profile.
The aim is collect 10,000 bottle caps. We hope to begin work on the mural towards the end of term 3 as part of Intercultural Understand (ICU) Week. Our aim is for the mural to celebrate the cultural diversity of our school with pictures of flags, nature, foods, traditional dress, arts etc. which are symbolic of the amazing cultural profile of our school. Students have been encouraged to submit their suggestions and designs by Friday 11th August
Please spread the word beyond our school community and reach out to family and friends. Collections can be dropped off at the front office or in classroom collection tubs. Plastic bottle lids of any colour are welcome, although we don’t think we will need anything larger than a peanut butter jar-sized lid.
We hope you will join us in creating a more sustainable community at Huntingdale Primary School.
Monika Herrmann
Hisae Hatigan
Holly Small
