Saturday, September 01, 2012

Classsroom Makeover!

..... on the outside!
I mentioned in my last post that I'd been working on a garden outside our classroom. Well, it's finally finished. This is what our portable classroom looked like at the start of the year. My room is the first one. This picture was taken before I'd gotten into the room during our Summer off. The grass was much greener then! We've had a very dry Winter....bring on Summer thunderstorms!
And this is after! We did all of this in the last 4 weeks!
This guy showed up as well, thanks to a wonderful mum! There's a little joey in the pouch too! The same mum made the bees, butterfly and ants!
I LOVE the pallets that are up against the building. We are growing some succulents, climbers, herbs, lettuces, flowers and a whole pallet of strawberries! Love the bee at the end too!
The butterflies and ants are super cute!

This area between the stairs to the classrooms used to be overgrown with weeds and rubbish would end up down there. Not anymore! This is our gnome garden.
 
My teaching partner has had the 3 little pigs put up camp in the space down the end of the building! The green fenced area is for potatoes. He is a very creative teacher!
 

I think the No Wolves sign is absolutely adorable!

As you can imagine, the kids LOVE it! We've had to make a new class job - Gardener! We haven't really had to do anything with the upkeep of it yet, the plants just need watering each day. We can't wait until we can harvest what we've grown. 

We started the garden because our science head has initiated a Green Gnome award. Each class was to take responsibility for an area around the school or their class - keep it rubbish free, the garden clean, make our school greener etc. We've also gotten in more rainwater tanks, recycling bins for the playground - they even trucked in heaps of soil for our gardens etc. The teachers have really taken it onboard - we've got some lovely gardens popping up, areas are looking tidier, some have started compost bins etc. The Green Gnome will be awarded to a different class each month. We don't want to be overconfident or anything, but my wonderful mum also made a lovely throne for the Green Gnome to sit on if we win him this month!
 
What does your school do to encourage a cleaner, greener school? 

Oh, and here's a little, itty, bitty photo of me as Camilla Cream....