Dunville Garden Eco Schools Celebration

Members of our school Eco Committee attended a community celebration today at Dunville Gardens at Redburn. They were one of four local schools represented, they learned a little of the history of the Dunville Garden and had the opportunity to go on a bug hunt and build mini beast homes. Our pupils engaged enthusiastically and demonstrated great knowledge of insects and wildlife. A big thank you to Lauren from the Ulster Conservation Volunteers for organising the event and the Holywood Shared Town initiative for funding it. The garden is open on a Monday and Saturday to the pubic and is well worth a visit.

P4 Trip to Lough Neagh Discovery Centre

The P4 year group loved their days at the Lough Neagh Discovery Centre this week. We have been learning about Lough Neagh as part of our Northern Ireland topic. We had great fun pond dipping and searching for mini beast in the woodlands area. These activities brought to life our current school Eco topics of biodiversity and marine life; it was fascinating to learn about the interdependence of local food chains and the importance of the Lough Neagh fly! The play park was also a great hit!

Lyric Theatre Waste Busters Play

Our P5s enjoyed a fantastic performance by the Lyric Theatre called ‘Waste Busters’ this morning. The play used music and drama to raise awareness of littering and plastic pollution. It has a powerful message and tied into our work as an Eco School. A big thank you to the team from the Lyric Theatre in Belfast.

P4 plant carrot seeds

P4 planted carrot seeds today. We learned about the Dig for Victory campaign in their WW2 topic and the importance of growing vegetables to help the war effort. As part of our Eco topic on Healthy Living we also have looked at the nutritious value of carrots for us today and how they are good for our bodies. Each child brought in an old toliet paper tube to reuse as a compostable plant pot. This way the carrots can be planted in the pots straight into the ground. Then they added compost, a seed and some water. We can’t wait to see our carrots grow!

Busy week for our HPS Eco Committee

Our HPS Eco Committee have had a very full week this week. Yesterday they gave a presentation to both the P1-3 and P4-7 assemblies on our Eco topic of Marine Life and the actions we are taking towards this topic as a school. They launched a campaign to reduce our plastic waste and introduced Waste Free Wednesdays. We would like to minimise single use plastics and encourage each other to use re-usable containers. The Eco committee will come round on Wednesdays and give out eco tokens that classes are using mostly reusable containers. The class with the most tokens by Easter will get a special prize! Today they met with Mrs Robertson, from our Board of Governors, to update her on all the work we are doing towards our Eco topics. Mrs Robertson thanked the committee for all their hard work for our school community.

HPS vegetable garden

One of our current Eco topics is Healthy Living; our pupils enjoy opportunities to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Before Christmas our school Eco club planted garlic and white onion bulbs in our vegetable garden. It is very exciting to see the shoots coming through. We also have lots of herbs growing and strawberry, blueberry and rhubarb plants which are dormant in the Winter months. We are part of the Ards and North Down Council’s Growing Club scheme, they are planning to come and run some sessions with the pupils to plan what to grow in our polytunnel this Spring.

Planting Wildflowers with Newcroft Lodge

This week is Intergenerational Week. As part of it P4 Room 14 had a lovely afternoon planting wildflower seeds with a little help from our friends are Newcroft Lodge Care Home. The children and residents really enjoyed working together scattering the seeds and watering the soil. We finished with some juice and biscuits in the dining hall. The wildflower bank is part of our HPS Goes Wild Project and we hope it will encourage lots of pollinators to come and make their home in our school.

P4 R14 trip to Lough Neagh Discovery Centre

P4 had a fantastic trip to the Lough Neagh Discovery Centre at the Oxford Island Nature Reserve. They enjoyed pond dipping, bird watching and a minibeast hunt in the woods.

Outdoor Pictures by our HPS Eco club

The Eco club have collected twigs and leaves and have been creating beautiful pictures from natural resources. It’s a lovely way to get out and enjoy our school grounds!

Eco Club's Green Fingers

March is a lovely time of year to get the green fingers out! Our HPS Eco Club have doing just that, they have harvested lots of lovely rhubard from our school vegetable garden and have planted carrots, parsnips, lettuce and parsley seeds . They also spread some ‘bee bombs’ of wild flower seeds in the planters by the P2 Island to encourage biodiversity! Keep up the great work Eco warriors!

P2 love their new Outdoor Building site!

Eco Club Make Bird Feeders

As the cold weather draws in the boys and girls in Eco Club are concerned about the food supply for some of our local birds. Using pinecones, string, lard and seeds they had great fun making bird feeders and hanging them in our school grounds.

P2 are loving learning outside! We have been playing games to help us learn our high frequency words in Literacy and making patterns with natural resources in Numeracy!

P4 Outdoor Learning

P4 have enjoyed lots of opportunities for Outdoor Learning this term. Today we consolidated telling the time one hour earlier and one hour later by creating our own clocks in the playground. Here are some photos. Outdoor learning is our current major topic as an Eco School.

P5 Bug Day Continued!

P5 Bug Day!

Primary 5 brought some creepy crawlie friends to school yesterday! We had great fun studying them and even drawing graphs on excel.

P5 enjoy a lovely class picnic!

What a lovely way to spend time together as we come to the end of our time in P5.The boys and girls enjoyed being outside on the front lawn of HPS for a picnic lunch. The smiles say it all…they really enjoyed it!

Wee Critters come to visit the Wee P4s!

Allan from Wee Critters came to Holywood PS today for the three P4 Classes. He brought a tarantula, a cockroach, a snake, a toad, a hedgehog and an owl. As he showed us the wee critters, he told us lots about them and how they adapt to their habitat.

P3 Room 4 enjoying being outdoors!

We are really enjoying being able to extend our learning further by being outdoors. What team work too!

P3 enjoying Outdoor Play