Children and young people from across East Ayrshire are nurturing nature
Children and young people from Nether Robertland Primary welcomed visitors from the Council and East Ayrshire Leisure to their school recently to demonstrate how they have been enriching and embracing nature.
The school is one of 12 primaries that has been taking part in the new natural environment initiative – Nurture Nature, which is led by Vicky McWilliam, Principal Teacher of Climate Change and Active Travel. They have been challenged to play an active part in helping to increase biodiversity in their local communities by completing Enriching Nature and Embracing Nature quests.
There are three Nurture Nature award levels – Green Guardian that requires six completed quests, Confident Conservationist that requires eight completed quests and Expert Environmentalist that requires ten completed quests.
Enriching Nature quests include collecting wild seeds, growing sunflowers, planting seed bombs and building a minibeast hotel, while the Embracing Nature quests included bee spotting, pond dipping, wildlife bingo and wild writing.
Councillor Elaine Cowan, Spokesperson for Education, and Children and Young People and Councillor Graham Barton, Spokesperson for Planning, Property and Environment along with Paddy MacDonald from East Ayrshire Leisure, were warmly welcomed by Headteacher Mrs Beveridge and Emma, Isobel, Sophie and Jorja from P4, who provided a fascinating, and very enthusiastic, outline of Nether Robertland Primary’s nurturing nature journey.
P4 had been working hard throughout the term with P1 completing their quests. Eight had already been completed and Councillors Cowan and Barton helped with the final two quests to complete the Expert Environmentalist award. First off, they planted sunflower seeds and Emma promised to look after their plants for them.
P4 with their teacher Mrs Henderson, then led a tour of their quest activities providing informative, and very well presented updates on each quest including a wind sock to show wind direction in their peaceful garden, a mini beast pond, a bee hotel and demonstrated using a magnifying glass to search for bugs. A large snail was discovered during the tour, causing great excitement, and was named Bertie by one of the P1s.
Councillor Barton said: “What a joy to join Nether Robertland Primary to find out more about Nurture Nature, the new natural environment initiative. The P4 children were incredibly engaged in the project and keen to tell us about their quests, and Councillor Cowan and I really enjoyed taking part.
“When it comes to Climate Change and encouraging people to care for our environment it can feel like an uphill battle at times, but engaging our children and young people in initiatives like Nurture Nature is key to future success. The enthusiasm of the children and young people was really uplifting, they cared deeply about the environment and their community. I would like to thank Vicky McWilliam for all her hard work delivering this initiative, I am looking forward to meeting all the schools who have earned their award at the Clean Green Awards in June.”