Dedication to Dirt

OK.  This is not a school story, but it's about dedication to dirt, so I had to tell it.  This week we have moved down south to the beautiful Denmark.  From my office I can see the trees and hear the birds and there is not a car in sight!  In moving all of our stuff, we had a dilemma - what were we going to do with all our lovingly created compost?  We couldn't just leave it there!  (A house is going to be built in the spot where we had our compost, so we knew the new occupants wouldn't use it).  So, we gathered our dirt, packed it all in to a box, and put it in the truck to Denmark, to be used for our vege garden down here.  When I told some Millennium Kids about our plans to transport our dirt, they were really grossed out! Let me reassure you, the compost did not smell, it was not disgusting and our garden will love us for it.  And the best part?  No waste!!!  Happy New Year everyone.  Ingrid.

FREE XMAS CRAFT WORKSHOP

Remember Tess, MK Mentor, from the Geelong Doing More With Less Sustainability Roadshow. She was studying at Victoria University and worked with Millennium Kids as part of a University assignment. Not only has she just been employed as an Art/Drama Specialist Teacher at Seaford North Primary School she has also designed some great free art and craft workshops using recycled materials for schools in Geelong.

DOING MORE WITH LESS CHRISTMAS IDEAS

WORKSHOP 1.
1. X-mas gift bags made from recycled bags and papers
2. X-mas cards made from recycled papers
3. X-mas brooches made from bottle tops, paper and brooch backs
4. x-mas lanterns made from recycled paper, string and glitter glue
 WORKSHOP 2
1. x-mas wreaths made from wire or coat hangers, plastic bags and recycled material
2. x-mas themed bunting flags made with recycled papers
3. x-mas tree wall decoration made with recycled papers
4. x-mas decorations made with plastic containers, string and glitter glue. 


Email info@millenniumkids.com.au if you would like to book a free two hour session.

Eight Hands Project - Ten Minutes

Hannah,a Millennium Kids Ambassador and Penrhos College student heard about the Doing More With Less Project at an MK meeting. Not content to hear the stories of what others were doing Hannah set up a project of her own. With three friends, Emma, Sofia and Molly, to help they gave up 10 minutes of their lunchtime to focus on the rubbish at their school. Well done Hannah. You are amazing.

Growing a Home at Medina

Turning a waste land to bush land is no easy task!  At Medina they have rolled up their sleeves and cleaned up the area.  Kids have also been involved in creating a big picture 'vision'. Yesterday when I visited the school we talked about the next stage being to learn a lot about the area, and to start small with action.  We looked at the Doing More with Less blog and at Harvey Primary School's Animoto.  Thanks Harvey!  I also showed the students a book that I bought from the Bundiyarra Aboriginal Community in Geraldton last week.  It's a Wajarri Dictionary - the language of the Murchison region of Western Australia.  We wondered  if there is a Noongar dictionary as well.  A good question to ask Mrs Little.

Kids decided that they should learn more about the plants and animals of the area.  I told them about the Greening Australia website, Grow Us a Home and the students began to investigate.

We then wrote a list of things to do next, as part of learning about the area.  Here's what we came up with.

1. Clean up the area.
2. Organise for rubbish to be removed.
3. Find out information about Kwinana.
4. Take photos of the plants.
5. Do soil testing and write up a description of the soil. (Can use the activities from the thumb drive)
6. Speak with Mrs Little about the Aboriginal history of Kwinana and connection to country.
7. Research the type of plants and animals in the area.
8. Check out the activities in the biodiversity section of the thumb drive that Ingrid gave us.
9. Listen to / record the sounds of birds in the area.
10. Make an Animoto describing what you can see / hear / feel.
11. Investigate Noongar words for the plants and animals.
12. Research bush tucker and medicine for Noongar country.

Medina are keen to get on to the next stage and are planning to send me a progress report by Week 7.  Go Medina!

Copy of Sustainability at Harvey Primary School

Copy of Sustainability at Harvey Primary School


So we gave Harvey PS a Flip camera and showed Sam Jacobs, the teacher www.animoto.com and then WOW - a few days later - their own film showing you their great project. Marvellous work Harvey MK Eco Warriors. You are stars! Just click the blue line.

Portarlington Get Composting

I had a great visit at Portarlington today.  The students were very keen to get started with composting but they weren't sure how to go about it.  So I told them to ask me any questions they needed answered.  One of the kids, Charlotte, asked me how other schools get started. Great question! I showed them the blog and shared the information from some of the other schools that are Doing More with Less.  Great to share across Australia!  We then decided that it would be helpful if everyone had a particular role to play.  Here's what the kids wrote about their roles, and their plans for composting at Portarlington.

Hi my name is Jack.  My job s to survey kids about nude food and try and get kids to bring nude food more often.

Hi my name is Jackson and I'm working with Tom and we are emptying the compost into the compost bin after school and before school we clean them and put them back.

Hi I'm Charlotte and my job is to learn how to build compost bins from recycled resources from the community for our school to use.

Hi our names are Gabby and Montanna.  Our job is to go around to all the classes and speak about our project.  We also speak to teachers and parents.

And it is EVERYONE'S job to model to others about nude food and composting, and to report your stories to Millennium Kids!  Well done Portarlington.  Ingrid

Drysdale and Harvey have a chat

Today Drysdale Primary in Victoria and Harvey Primary in WA got to chat on Skype and share some ideas.  Following the conversation, we gave the Drysdale kids a really short time to come up with some notes on the ideas that were shared.

·         Drysdale Primary School has started the RED Project which is a great way to reduce soft plastics in Drysdale by taking all their soft plastics to school from home etc. and putting them in a big red bin.

      We have Nude Food Day every Tuesday.  Last year Drysdale Primary School won The Primary School award for rubbish free lunch.  Here's us winning the award.  We're very proud!  This photo was even in the local paper.

The RED (Recycle, Educate, Change) project is where you recycle soft plastics.  You cannot recycle soft plastic that has silver in the middle and it would take 660 years if it went to landfill until it breaks down.  We worked out that it takes about 8 generations to break down. Every kg of plastic we get $5.  (Mr Kennedy, the teacher, said that one student had no plastic to contribute because for her family, EVERY day is Nude Food day.  Fantastic!)

At Drysdale Primary School we use a Bokashi system which involves putting our food scrap in a bucket which we then put into a special bokashi bin and we put a special powder which breaks down the scraps into a liquid which we then put into our vegie garden to help the vegies.  Also we have a bucket in every classroom.

Drysdale Primary School is pretty good at remembering to turn our lights of, but some of us don't need to because in the year 5/6 area we have auto lights that has motion detector which saves lots of energy.

Written by the Millennium Kids at Drysdale Primary School.