Biodiversity Week

Funded by the Big Lottery Fund Breathing places grant aimed at making our Breathing Place, Barty’s Wood, a focal point in the community.

The week was launched on the Friday with activities for the children devised by the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and the Peak Park rangers who help deliver our Environmental Education Programme, followed by a community BBQ.

The following week consisted of cross curricular activities based on Barty’s Wood and Barty’s Pond, and the plants and animals (some imaginary) who live there.

The children cooked omelettes and pasta dishes using vegetables they had grown themselves, did lots of bug hunting and pond dipping, made nature crowns, constructed elf houses, frog and hedgehog houses, made clay tree nymphs which they attached to the trees, and wrote stories which they made into books after being enthralled by ‘Creeping Toad’, a local story teller.

By Thursday we needed a change so they made up musical scores by listening to the sounds we could hear in the woodland and then using our bodies to recreate the sounds. We discovered how animals use camouflage to hide and examined Rousseau’s work. We then had a go at making our own Rousseau type collages, hiding as many animals as we could beneath trees, leaves, etc and using ICT to create individual pictures.

Finally we brought all our work to a celebration assembly to thank god for the diversity of our wonderful world and all He has created. Like God, we did it all in six days.