Saturday, March 24, 2007

Eco Learning Area

The Eco Learning Area (ELA) is a P&C initiative to change an abandoned area of the school grounds into an area for learning about nature and the environment. Several working bees and many additional volunteer hours by dedicated parents have seen a great transformation over recent months.



The ELA features an eco pond built by year 6 in 2006. The project for 2007 was to convert this pond into frog-friendly habitat.

Here is an early stage of herb spiral construction; hard yakka weeding the spiral and relocating a giant ironbark log; and its resting place as a seat by the eco-pond.


















The official opening of the ELA will happen in May but it has already been used for learning in a number of ways. On Harmony Day the herb spiral and vegie gardens were planted by students. There have been excursions from the classroom to the Fungi Patch.

And then there's the spontaneous learning that this area invites: on a recent working bee the young children were drawn to the eco pond as two boys from year 1 talked spontaneously about mosquito larvae.