Greetings to all of our friends in Kafuro and also at other UK and Ugandan schools. This afternoon was School Grounds Day at Liss Junior School where the whole school works on various projects. This included:
Putting up lard balls to feed birds.
Planting flowers in the pots around the front and side of the school to make it look beautiful
Refurbishing our minibeast hotel
Cleaning and refurbishing our butterfly houses
Clearing raised beds and planting them with vegetables
Harvesting our rhubarb crop
Clearing litter around the school and gathering wood
Preparing our bottle greenhouse for the new pots with seeds in them
Clearing the main pathway up to our nature area
Clearing the pond in the nature area and cutting back willow.
We were given lots of help by parents who gave up their afternoon to support the children. we were also helped by Joe Williams, a ranger from QECP, who came in on his day off to help the children clean the pond and cut back the willow. Joe is an outstanding example of community engagement by a ranger.
We were all really happy with our new tidy school and we can’t wait for our new crops to grow.
On Friday, Liss Junior School held its annual School Grounds Day with children, teachers and parents working together to maintain the school grounds. Each class took on different jobs:
Ash Class: Cleared the cob oven area and applied a new skim of clay to the oven.
Oak Class: renewed the plant pots outside each classroom and put in bird feeders around the school using coconut shells, lard and birdseed.
Willow Class: Collected wood for the cob oven and planted the front border of the school
Beech Class: Created a new compost heap near the school nature area.
Birch Class: Renewed our minibeast hotel.
Pine Class: Renewed the butterfly houses.
Rowan Class: Continued building the bottle greenhouse, helped clean the nature area and cut back willow. Found worms to keep our wormery topped up.
Maple Class: Used logs to line the path up to our nature area.
Children gathering wood for the cob oven
There was much activity around the garden area
Mrs Armstrong led the skim of the cob oven
Pine Class refurbished the butterfly houses
Oak Class made bid feeders
Collecting leaves for the compost
Building the compost heap
Children cleaned the nature area
Joe Williams supervised the cutting back of the willow
Maple Class replanted the sensory plant bed
Digging for worms
Steve Peach and Joe led the cleaning of the pond
Conyinuing to build the bottle greenhouse
Cutting back the willow.
The badger sett on the edge of our nature area.
We were joined for the morning by Joe Williams and Steve Peach from Queen Elizabeth Country Park. They led the cleaning of the nature area and cutting back the willow. Steve also identified that we have an active badger sett in our nature area. He is going to install a camera so that we can try and see the badgers come out at night (badgers are notoriously shy creatures).
Mr Stanley has set Kafuro children a challenge for this year. Each class at liss Junior School has planted tomato seeds and we want to compare the plants we grow with those grown by Kafuro children. Mr Stanley has told the Liss children that this is a really tough challenge as Yowasi says that Kafuro tomatoes are the best in the Rubirizi district of Uganda. We hope that you wil post some photos of your tomato plants growing.
Rowan Class pupils set up filled the tomato planters with compost
Thanks to Moris and P6 for their post. It is good to know that your bees are doing well although we’re sure you would prefer to have all six hives populated by colonies. Here in Liss, the long cold winter has only just ended and we have unfortunately lost two colonies through the cold weather. However, we checked our third colony (the original) this morning and the bees were very active out foraging for food. The pleasing news is that the weather is finally becoming warmer so we are expecting the colony to thrive and hope that we can take a swarm from the colony to populate a second hive later in the year.
We are also pleased to hear that Community Ranger, Elinah will be taking regular assemblies at Kafuro. Today, our community ranger, Joe took assembly at Liss and told us all about animals in Uganda and the UK. We learned how a female weaver bird can destroy a nest made by her mate with just one snip of her beak if she doesn’t like it.
We also continued building our bottle greenhouse today. Mr Stanley and two pupils turned and raked the soil in the greenhouse and made sure it was level while our site manager, Mr Haycock had a very difficult job trying to fit the door. The problem was that the wood had warped over the winter so poor Mr Haycock had to keep making adjustments. With only half the roof to fit, we are confident that the bottle greenhouse will be finished tomorrow.
Finally, we are able to tell you that our solar panels have now saved three cubic tonnes of carbon dioxide. We are looking forward to raising the rest of the money required to provide Kafuro with solar panels so that you can use a clean source of energy as well.
Mr Haycock fiting the door
Violet & Ashleigh raking the soil
The bees were busy around the hive
Joe talking to the children during assembly
Our Solar display showing we have now saved three cubic tonnes of carbon dioxide
Work on the bottle greenhouse has been continuing this week with Mr Haycock, ably assisted by Ashleigh, Tegan and Violet from Class AS, Three sides of the greenhouse are complete with just the roof and the door to go on. Mr Stanley is going to level the floor on Friday and we hope to finish the greenhouse early next week.
Mr Haycock attaching bottles to the main structure
After the horrible weather for School Grounds Day last Friday, the weather this week has been much nicer and Thursday was a particularly nice day. Mr Stanley took a small group of girls from Class AS to help continue building the bottle greenhouse. As you can see from the photos, most of the sides are now complete. We hope to finish the bottle greenhouse in the next couple of weeks.
One side of the bottle greenhouse is now fully complete
Well, the weather was absolutely terrible, but this didn’t stop Class AS from playing a full part in School Grounds Day.
The class split up into three groups. The first group went with Miss Hall to ‘tip’ the rosemary plants we planted last year. To ‘tip’ means cutting off the top two inches or so. This allows the plant to grow bushier. The off cuts were planted in pots so hopefully they will grow into new rosemary plants. Four of the girls then went off to work with the rangers (see separate blog post).
A second group went with Mr Stanley to plant daffodils. For children reading this in Kafuro, daffodils are bright yellow flowers that grow from bulbs in the spring season in the UK. They are also the national flower of Wales! At first the children tried digging holes with trowels but it took a long time so Mr Stanley got a better tool for making the holes. After he made the holes the children came along and filled them in with bulbs and soil. They then secured it by stamping on the soil. The children and Mr Stanley also made the initials of classes AS and KR with the bulbs, so it will be interesting to see what happens when the bulbs flower next year.
The third group worked with Mr Haycock, our site manager, to continue building the bottle greenhouse. This involved cutting bottles to size in order to fit on the bamboo canes and then making sure the canes were taken through to Mr Haycock to be fitted on to the bottle greenhouse frame. Unfortunately, by eleven o’clock the heavens opened and it was soon raining so hard that the slope near the bottle greenhouse became dangerous to walk on as children kept on slipping.
The class went indoors, but when the rain eased a small group went out with Mr Stanley to weed out one of the raised beds. Another group planed five sunflower seeds for the class competition to see which class in Kafuro and Liss can grow the tallest sunflower.
In the afternoon Mr Stanley organised an experiment to see how water can be filtered. Each group had a two litre empty water bottle which had an end cut off and a hole drilled in the bottle top. the bottle had grass, builders sand and stones put in. Next, muddy water was poured into the bottle and dripped through the hole in the bottle top into a measuring jug. This was then poured into the bottle again. After repeated cycles the materials in the bottle began to filter the water, which gradually grew clearer and clearer. We would like to ask our friends in P7 at Kafuro: Apart form boiling water what other methods do you use to filter and purify water?
As the weather is due to improve this week, we hope to finish the bottle greenhouse. We would also like to thank Mr Haycock, Mrs Keane and Mrs Stemp for their help.
Mr Burford’s assembly celebrated all the work that had taken place.
Fitting bottles to bamboo canes
Planting daffodil bulbs
The bulbs were planted along the entire length of the school
Mr Burford gave Mr Stanley a special tool for making holes for the bulbs
Mr Haycock organised the children.
The bottle canes were fitted to the greenhouse frames
On Friday 15th April, Liss Junior School had a school grounds day and Freya, Jade, Katie and Imogen from Class AS were chosen to go to the pond area and work with the rangers from Queen Elizabeth Country Park. First, we went up onto the field. Here, we met Joe who told us about birdhouses and we helped him put it up. Then we went over to the pond and looked in the weeds for water creatures. Zen and Rebecca were clearing out the pond with rakes. We found lots of creatures for example: Ramshorn snail, water louse, pond snail and some sort of grub. We also met some newts. We picked them up and looked at them carefully. One of them played dead on Jade’s hand to make me put him down. Zen then told us lots about all the creatures we had found.
She told us about how plants and animals live in the pond and told us about how if they didn’t rake everything out the plants would take over and “choke the pond!”. She also said that if we made a new pond all the newts and everything would transfer to that one.
Afterwards, we went to show the rangers around the school field and they were very impressed with our bug hotel. Unfortunately, Mr Stanley remembered we were on the field and came to get us. Here are some facts we learnt:
A baby bee is a larvae
Plants can take over a whole pond
There is a spiky plant called a soldier plant
There is such thing as a water scorpion
You have to have wet hands to hold a newt without gloves
