Our Green Schools Programme

St. Patrick's Junior School has always worked hard to look after the environment, but since joining the Green Schools Programme run by An Taisce, the whole school community has become involved in a huge range of recycling, energy saving and water-saving initiatives.

Our Green Schools Committee comprises our Principal, three teachers, an SNA, a parent and eight children from each of the First and Second Classes. They are responsible for the overall running of the Green Schools Programme in our school.

We keep our school grounds looking well by planting bulbs and taking care of our plants and flowers. We do daily litter patrols to keep our grounds clean.

In the areas of Litter and Waste, we recycle paper, card, plastic and batteries. Each classroom has their own recycling bin which are emptied into bigger bins and then brought to our local Recycling Centre. We also do lots of composting of tea bags from the Staff Room and fruit from lunches.

To encourage classes to keep our school tidy, we have a Tidy Classrooms Competition. The Junior and Senior Infants, along with Early Start, are all members of the Clean Class Club. They keep their classrooms tidy and remember to recycle in order to win the Clever Cat Cup each week.

In First and Second Classes, the children compete to win the Tidy Classrooms Award. They also compete to win the Green Factor Competition. This prize is awarded each week to the child in each class who has the healthiest lunch, helps with recycling, picks up litter and helps keep our school clean.

We also work hard to save energy. We remember to turn off our lights and electrical appliances when we're leaving the room, we wear extra layers instead of turning up the heat, we close doors and we turn off our taps to save water.

We are very proud to have received our third Green Flag for water-saving. We remember to check for leaky taps, we take showers instead of baths, we collect rainwater for our plants and we put plastic bottles in our toilet cisterns to save 1 litre for each flush!

We are working very hard as you can see!


Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Spring!

Spring time is finally upon us, after a cold and wet Winter.

Each class this year planted a selection of Spring bulbs in their own classroom pot. The children kept an eye on the bulbs over the cold winter months and once the spring sun started to peep out, the pots were put out in the sun.

Many of these bulbs are flowering now and it is heart-warming to see that Spring is finally coming.
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