Project Overview
Our school's STEAM education team applied and successfully received a ‘Sustainable Schools’ government grant to assist us to build an environmental learning hub or outdoor classroom at LCPS in 2023.
Over Term 1, our Year 6 classes used Google Sketchup during technology lessons to design the outdoor classroom space where environmental education lessons will be taught.
All of our classes across the school will be contributing to building different parts of our outdoor learning hub which we are hoping to open in Education Week (Term 3, Week 3).
Grades will be working on constructing things such as wicking beds, vertical gardens, an aquaponic and a solar hydroponic system, a bush tucker garden, a plastic bottle greenhouse, a pollinator pathway, a native beehive (stingless bees), insect hotels, a bird bath and bird feeders, a composting system and a worm farm. It's a huge project which we are hoping will inspire our student eco warriors to gain a deeper understanding of sustainability and ways to care for the environment.
Environment Leaders
As part of this project, classes in years 2 to 6 selected passionate environment leaders to take on special roles and responsibilities in maintaining our outdoor eco learning hub such as managing the composting system, constructing a plastic bottle greenhouse as well as weeding and watering the gardens.
Our environment club leaders meet every Wednesday at lunchtime.
No Waste Wednesday
The first job of our Environment Leaders in Term 2, was to bring back an old initiative ‘No Waste Wednesday’. As a school we will be encouraging our students to bring in a lunch that contains no single use plastic waste each week on a Wednesday. The leaders also collect fruit and vegetable scraps during Wednesday lunch for composting. This is weighed to enable us to collect data on the impact we are having in reducing waste.
The Yarning U
The initial phase of constructing our new environmental learning hub or outdoor classroom occurred over the Term 1, 2023 school holidays. We have created a beautiful sandstone yarning semicircle. We would like to thank Adrian and the team from Carl Gillmore Landscapes for working with us to build our fabulous ‘Yarning U’.
The Google Sketchup designs that our Year 6 students created were used to come up with the final plan for the yarning semicircle where our environmental education lessons will take place. As we now have the basic structure for our eco learning hub, our STEAM team will start working with all of the classes across the school on their different environmental projects.
Parent Assistance
Thank you to all of the people who came along to the P&C working bee on Sunday 4th June. It was amazing to see the number of people who gave their time. Garden beds were created, 5 tonnes of soil was moved and weeds and rubbish cleared from surrounding areas. Also, the holes were dug for the dreaming poles that were prepared by Mr Darren Simpson .
For any parents out there who are environmental enthusiasts or have particular expertise and would like to get involved please email or contact the school.
Dreaming Poles
At the end of Term 2, groups of Year 5 and 6 students had the opportunity to work with Walangari (an Australian Aboriginal Artist and Aboriginal Elder from Alice Springs who now lives and works in Sydney) on the dreaming poles for our new Eco Learning Hub.
The students planned their story and then designed it on paper before painting their poles.
The poles have now been proudly erected in the Eco Learning Hub for all to see.
