Kirkhill’s Eco Committee

1. Kirkhill’s Eco Committee Our Action Plan for 2012-2013

2. Who are we? • The Eco Committee are responsible for looking after the Eco Garden and school grounds, keeping the school clean and tidy, recycling rubbish and promoting an Eco friendly attitude throughout the school. • We are also interested in promoting healthy and environmentally friendly ways to travel to school whether you walk, cycle or run! • We have an interest in learning outside in our Outdoor Classroom and making “Our Outdoors” a wonderful place to learn and have fun. • We attend meetings, are good listeners and enjoy sharing ideas with our classmates. We also work well as a team!

3. Eco Committee Aims • This year Mrs Donaldson decided to challenge the Eco Committee with lots of new and exciting projects. • We worked with Mrs Donaldson to set aims and agree our Action Plan for the Eco Committee to work on this year. Please remember that you can see our Action Plan on the Eco Committee section of the school website. • We have been VERY busy but it has been so much fun and we think all of our hard work is helping make the school a fun place to learn outdoors!

4. Progress Towards our Targets • We would now like to tell you about some of our achievements this year. • We are very proud of our hard work and although we have had to work hard, we think this has been the best year ever and we have done so much to improve our school!

5. Working with the Community Two of our big aims for this year were: to become involved in voluntary work in the local community and to source and work with local businesses in order for us to work together to improve our school grounds even more.

6. The Scottish Garden! We researched local businesses and then worked with Greenbank Gardens, Albar and local garden centres as well as local joiner to create our Scottish Garden. They told us which plants would be best suited to the type of soil in our school grounds and then we designed the layout and where everything should go. We wanted to mark our grounds with something special and so we researched how to do this. We decided to build a Cairn to symbolise that Kirkhill is our Special, Memorable Place!

7. Christmas Dinner for Wildlife! We worked with another local company called Starling Learning to plan and lead a special day for the P1-3. They made Christmas Puddings for birds, tree garlands and decorations for squirrels! It was Christmas time too- lucky wildlife! We got a turn to make something too of course!

8. Our School Orchard We worked with Scottish Orchards to source our new trees. We know that trees are very good for the environment and air pollution. We had to use our Maths skills to measure out the space they need to grow and plant them in the Eco Garden in the best position. We hope to work with the dinner ladies to make something with our fruit!

9. Timberline helped us design and build our new Outdoor Shelter. The shelter means that we can learns outdoors even when it is wet or sunny! We got to choose and agree the colours and added window boxes to make it bright with flowers. In Kirkhill, we like to keep fit and enjoy our PE activities. Scotplay helped us design and build our new activity zone which is so much fun.

10. The whole school got involved in our from our “Plant a Bulb Day” and the flowers are beginning to bloom! We designed our rockery next and it has grasses and wild flowers to encourage local wildlife! Please keep a look out for the Kirkhill Scarecrow coming soon!

11. Road Safety • We have also been working with Mr Brown from East Renfrewshire's Roads Department all year. • He has helped us to create a new and improved Travel Plan to encourage parents to park away from the school gates and to walk to the school gates – We call this ‘Park and Stride!’ • We ran a whole school competition to create banners for our school gates – and I was one of the winners! Have you seen them at the school gates?

12. Our Outdoors Celebration Week • To showcase all of our hard work the Eco Committee are hosting an “Our Outdoors School Celebration Week”. • We have planned many Outdoor Learning Experiences for the pupils (and teachers!) like Cycling and Road Safety, Outdoor Art Workshops and the 500 mile running challenge! The children have already been having so much fun whilst also being reminded about activities that they can be doing outdoors to keep fit and healthy. • To finish of our celebration on Thursday 2nd May we have invited all of you and our friends and families to the Outdoor Evening to see our beautiful School Grounds and the results of our hard work this year. We have also planned lots of fun outdoor activities like Circus Skills, Playground Games, Tennis Coaching, Beat the Goalie and the Judo Masterclass is returning! Lots of members of the local community will be joining us too. We hope you will all be able to join us!

13. PHEW!!!! • Wow! We hope you agree that we have done well. We also have lots more things on our Action Plan so please remember to take a look at it on the web. • We have worked very hard, improved our team working skills and also learned lots of new skills too!

14. Our Last Target… To investigate how to lay out a “Business Plan” and to present this to the Parent Council to ask for their financial support!

15. An Eco Appeal on Behalf of Kirkhill Primary We think you’ll agree after hearing us speak, That we have accomplished so much from week to week. But there is still one thing missing that we really do need, It will help us to store our gardening equipment and seeds! The wheelbarrows, planters and the odd gardening tool, Are lying around, they make a mess of our beautiful school. We have all the soil, plants and lots of other ‘stuff’, But we’ve nearly run out of money so the final challenge is tough! So we wondered if you could please lend us a hand? A small donation of £50 for a shed would really be grand! THANK YOU FOR LISTENING