Dear Parents,
Our environmental
investigations have continued this week with a visit from Wendy,
from KESAB Environmental solutions. Wendy facilitated
a great hands on experience for the children where they were introduced to
three coloured bins and we discussed what should go into each bin.
We learnt
that the yellow bin is the recycle bin and the contents can be turned into
something new.
The green bin's contents get turned into compost and goes back
on the garden. The red bin is for general waste and goes into landfill. The
children all took turns to sort a variety of items into the appropriate bins
and Wendy really was impressed by how well we did!
We learnt a valuable
lesson with regard to where we place our rubbish and the need to be careful not
to add items to our general waste that could have been recycled.
Following on from
conversations last week where Zali suggested we get paper from trees and
Nicholas Y told us that when we waste paper more trees need to be cut
down, we continued our discussions about how paper and how it is
made.
You cut down
trees - Archie
You put the
branches in a truck - Sebastian
You take the
branches to a factory to turn it into paper. A machine grinds it - Rory
You need the
leaves, to make it (the paper) flat - Will A
And you need to
add salt - Archie
And hair - Rory
We watched some
short clips which showed us the process taken and learnt that our initial
understandings were pretty spot on, although instead of mixing the wood chips
with salt or hair, they mixed them with water to make a pulp. They also added
bleach. We have learnt that if we recycle used paper, we do not have to
cut down so many trees! Wouldn't that be wonderful for our environment and the
animals who use trees for their homes?
Our bower bird
bags have gone home this week with the aim of collecting recyclable
items for us to use in our classroom for art and craft projects. The
children were a little worried that all the items they collect had to be
blue, just like a real bower bird, but we assured them they didn't!
Best wishes,
Emma, Mel and
Cris
