This year in our school, St. Ronan’s, we’re doing biodiversity as the theme for our 5th Green School flag. We’ve looked for ways to encourage plants and animals into our school grounds, such as planting native shrubs.
(By Julianne Moore, 5th Class, St. Ronan’s N.S., Cloonloo, via Boyle, Co. Sligo)
Bug Hotel
One of our projects was making our Bug Hotel. Our caretaker, Chris, made it with recycled pallets and we stuffed it with straw, sticks, moss, grass, stones and pieces of cardboard. We’ve painted signs and wrote things like ‘Bug Hotel’, ‘Don’t eat your neighbour’ and ‘Wipe your Web’ on them. We hope to have lots of visitors.
Planting Native Trees and Shrubs
We planted mountain ash, oak, blackthorn, whitethorn, rose, hazel, beech and other native trees and shrubs around our school. Some of us brought our wellies and helped plant them with Chris and Mr.Hardiman. We got to dig holes and gently place the roots of the trees into the holes. We saw loads of worms when we were digging.
Bird Feeders
We always put out our crusts and lunch scraps on an open bird feeder, but the crows always got there before the smaller garden birds, so we put up a smaller bird feeders on our classroom windows. They have suction cups and are enclosed, therefore allowing the garden birds to feed. We also put up bird identification sheets beside, them so when birds land there, we’ll know what they are.
Learning about the native plants and animals
In school, we’re learning how to recognise different animals and plants native to Ireland. Every Assembly, Ms.Jordan tests us on them and we get most of them right. We are also learning about different plants, animals and insects in both classrooms, by participating in the ‘The Great Plant Hunt’!
We’re really enjoying all the work we are doing so that we get our 5th Green School Flag on Biodiversity.
