Students of St Catherine’s CofE School in Launceston have been learning all about caring for the environment and climate change as part of their Climate Action Day.

The focus of the day was re-wilding and children took part in a variety of workshops across the school grounds.

Activities including learning about ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’, in which the teacher gave each team a picture or object and they had to run and choose the right category to put it in. This led to lots of interesting conversations — do you all reuse your cardboard? Does your post come by email rather than on paper? What do we do with our clothes when they’re worn out and food when we’re finished? The children were asked in the morning to keep all their rubbish from snack and lunch time. They then sorted it out into what could be recycled and what could be composted. There were quite a few crisp packets…can these be recycled? The children talked about how we could reduce waste, what could we do as a school?

Later the children made plant pots, using old wellies to plant herbs and wildflowers, a good start to re-wilding! They learnt how to use newspaper as an environmentally friendly way to plant bulbs, as planting in newspaper than will disintegrate into the soil and provide nutrients into the ground. They also learnt about how rubbish and waste impacts on wildlife. The children made Tippy Taps while learning about water conservation and global water shortages for drinking and washing. Some groups made bird feeders using twigs, garden twine, lard and bird seeds. A simple and effective way to ensure the birds get some food in the cold months! They also created leaf habitats in the trees for animals.

The last part of the day saw the children being citizen scientists. Firstly, discussing our planet as a whole and talking about our oceans, countries and continents. How can we be a citizen scientist? An example, the children talked about is the Birdwatches run by RSPB, collecting information and then storing the data. The children had a go at bird watching as it is Bird Watch Month! The children learnt that an important aspect of being a citizen scientist is communicating and listening.

They finished the day making a wooden circle pledge about what their school and they individually would like to try and reduce.