Launching ‘Our Planet’ school theme

Each half term here at St Edward’s Prep we focus on a whole school theme and this half term we are excited to announce that the topic will be ‘Our Planet’.  Guided by their class teachers the children will be using this theme to research and formulate questions they would like to investigate and then choose how to present their findings to their classmates and peers.  Our children always approach this aspect of their learning with enthusiasm, curiosity, independence and confidence. 

To kick off ‘Our Planet’ theme we were very fortunate to have Mr Peter Milne join us on Thursday to run workshops at school for all our year groups.  Mr Milne runs Target4Green, a hands-on community focused company dedicated to supporting schools by educating children and adults on the wonders of our world, the global issues we face and how we can help solve them. 

Peter launched the theme with an interactive assembly sharing with us some fascinating and thought-provoking videos about Planet Earth and what a special and unique place this is that we all call home. Peter motivated the children to better understand the incredible engineering and architectural inventions that exist, the environmental challenges we face and be proactive in the wider community in order to help reduce water, waste and energy.   

The Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children each attended a workshop learning about the fascinating animals that populate out planet and how we can better look after and protect them.  Peter had a large box of (clean!!) rubbish that he proceeded to scatter on the floor in the classroom much to the children’s surprise! They were then given the task to ‘recycle’ the correct rubbish to the correct bins.  A key message the children took home was to help their parents by being more proactive in recycling metals, plastics and paper avoiding landfill and our rivers and oceans.

The Prep school children were treated to a fascinating workshop on Dubai, and how much the city has grown since the 1990s, forging ahead to become a sustainable city of the future with solar energy, green transport and water salination systems.  The children were amazed and inspired by the engineering and architectural wonders of Dubai such as the Burj Khalifa, Palm Islands and the Dubai Water Canal.  Peter also shared the World Islands case study with the children explaining how this project became over costly and very damaging to the environment, with only 2 to 3 islands open for commercial use and a fear the islands maybe sinking back in to the water.

It was then the children’s turn to work in pairs to discuss and design their own sustainable city for the future.

The next few weeks will see the children investigate their ideas around our Planet Earth and we are looking forward to hearing all about their projects and where their learning takes them over the coming weeks.