Composting Workshop
Show The Love is an annual celebration of all that we love but could lose to climate change. Together we can protect the people, places, and life we love by speaking as one and encouraging our leaders to take action on climate change. Last week Oakridge School took part in this celebration. The children enjoyed a week packed full of fun activities, two of which took place on the allotment.
The composting workshop was led by Lesley Greene, a Master Composter and founder of Bisley Community Composters. The children learned all about the creatures that live in a compost heap, the importance of composting and how they can compost more at school.
The children were broken down into three groups and each had a turn at one of the different activities. The first group got the chance to learn about the basic structure of a compost. They studied a food chain tower, which helped them to understand the different layers of a compost and what organisms and mini bests live where.
This led onto a hands on activity where the children got to rummage through some compost to see what they could find!
It was a lovely journey of discovery as teachers and children delved in and got their hands dirty.
With the use of name cards, the children were helped to identify the different creatures they found.
It was delightful to see such fascination on their faces.
From woodlice to worms to millipedes, the children found the activity very exciting. Lesley’s enthusiasm was infectious and by the end of the session everyone was feeling a lot of love for good composting!
The second activity involved teaching the children about how to improve their own school compost on the allotment. Bags of green waste, cardboard, kitchen vegetable waste and chicken and animal bedding were brought up to the plot prior to the start of the workshop. After a demonstration by Lesley about the correct way to build up the layers, the children made a start on it themselves.
Cardboard was used to line the sides, acting as a thermal wall to help keep the heat in…
…animal bedding was added to help balance all the green waste…
…and layers of cardboard were also placed between the layers to help with the decomposition process. The children had a lot of fun breaking up the cardboard!
The third activity was aimed at helping the children to understand what can and can’t go on a compost. It was a much more theoretical based exercise.
As the children gathered around the table, they all got involved with helping each other work out which food waste went where.
The composting session lasted all morning. It was really lovely to see all the children engaged in what was being asked of them, working so well together and showing great enthusiasm.