Wetherby pupils mark Earth Day

Children at St Joseph’s Primary School in Wetherby last Friday celebrated Earth Day with a variety of activities.

Started in 1970, the day encourages people to change behaviour to save the environment and Year 5 and 6 pupils at the school worked on and shared their ideas with families and friends.

As part of their Live Simply ethos, youngsters held activities all last half term leading up to the week, with a focus on each class creating their own ‘8 to be great’ actions, such as reduce, reuse and recycle.

Adrian Balcombe, of Boston Spa, Wetherby and Villages Community Green Group, led the session and said: “St Joseph’s is a fantastic school to support; they have a great educational focus on sustainability.

“In fact, they have been the only school in Wetherby to participate in the programme (alongside Primrose Lane Primary School, Boston Spa) delivered by local Community Green Group volunteers.

“We would be delighted to support other local schools with this initiative, so please get in touch at bostongreengroup.co.uk.

Deputy Head and Year 6 teacher, Jayne Ward added: “This extra-curricular content really helps to support our curriculum intent which includes our children being life-long leaners, having high aspirations for themselves, the community they live in and God’s world.

“Learning about the climate crisis at a young age is key to making a difference and is easily built into covering key elements of the National Curriculum too with a little bit of thought.”

She added: “The content of the presentation was pitched very well for the children’s age and was accessible for differing abilities too.

“The carbon footprint topic certainly gave the children lots to think about, not just in school but to take home to the family home too.

“We have many plans now about how we can push forward and build on this topic to bring about further change in our school and community so that we are living more simply and protecting our planet.”

Headteacher Louise Milivojevic said that she is extremely proud of the whole community at St Joseph’s to make a difference to living more sustainably and is passionate about ensuring the topic remains a key element of St Joseph’s curriculum.

“Many of our recent Outstanding Contribution Awards have gone to children who are not only living out our Live Simply mission in school but also outside of school, in their homes and when they are out and about.

“Our children are the future generation and they are the ones who can really make a difference and protect our environment.”

As part of the Community Green Group recycling initiative, St Joseph’s have started to collect crisp packets and pens/markers for recycling into fence posts, watering cans and picnic benches.

Members of the public can also recycle empty crisp packets, used pens/markers and used toothpaste tubes/brushes at Yorkshire Building Society, Wetherby or Yeadon’s Hardware, Boston Spa.

To date the scheme has recycled over 25,000 crisp packets.