This week, in the garden…

Some of our K1 students have been wondering about creepy crawlies and things that grow. In small groups, the students visited one of our worm farms and they learned about how these special worms break down fruit and vegetable peels and turn it into valuable fertiliser for our school gardens. The worms are Malaysian blue worms and they are used for vermicomposting. Some of the students were very brave and picked up a very wriggly worm and giggled as it tickled their palms. One worm even leapt out of a student’s hand and landed on the ground. Who knew that worms could be so athletic?

The worm farm has a number of layers and the first layer is where we leave the food scraps. The second layer is where the ‘castings’ collect and the third layer is where the ‘worm tea’ collects. The castings and the tea are produced by the worms, after they eat all the fruit and veggie peels that the K2 and Grade 1 students feed them. The castings and tea contain lots of nutrients that our plants need, so we pass these along to the Incredible Edible Garden group to put on the garden beds.

The next stop was to explore the edible gardens to see how eggplants, dill, kafir lime and basil grow. It was great fun to try and guess what all the different plants were. The K1 students were very clever and could identify the banana trees. They saw a banana flower and how it developed into a whole bunch of smaller bananas.

Photos by Rekha Jansen

Earth Hour March 25, 2017

What is Earth Hour?

Around the globe, millions of people, businesses, and landmarks set aside an hour to host events, switch off their lights, and make noise for climate change action. This year Earth Hour is at 8:30pm on 25 March 2017. 

Click here for more information

Click here for Earth Hour in Singapore information

Grade 1 Assembly

Tips on how to water the plants

Grade 3 Water Warriors teaching their classmates

Many thanks to Clare Willis (Grade 3 teacher and budding movie director) for putting together a very informative training video for the grade. 

Grade 1 students, the 3Rs and Worm Composting

Ms. Kutschenreuter is the Primary Environmental Stewardship Coordinator at Dover campus. She visited the Grade assembly and was impressed that Grade 1 students already knew so much about caring for their environment.

The students talked about the 3Rs - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. They also sang along with the video about going green. Ms. Whitehead's class have been helping with a worm composter and feeding the worms fruit and vegetable peels for the past couple of months. The students were excited to touch some of the worms and intrigued as to how they broke down banana peels into soil. They also learned about ‘worm tea’ and how it helps plants grow.

We're going green... 

Grade 3 Water Warriors helping our Incredible Edible Garden group

As you might imagine, the blazing sun in Singapore can make plants on our campus quite thirsty. While we do get a lot of rain, there are times when our gardens need a bit of extra help. Grade 3 have just started a whole grade environmental service where they water some of the plants in our edible garden patch.

This initiative is a great example of collaboration amongst different grades at UWCSEA. Students in the Incredible Edible Garden extra curricular activity meet every Monday and Wednesday to plant and maintain the garden. The Grade 3 classes rotate on a roster to water the plants on Tuesday and Friday mornings.  By everyone giving a little bit of their time, the plants in our edible garden will thrive.

Today, some members of Mrs. Daniel's class marvelled at how quickly the water disappeared in the pot where the young papaya plant was growing. Who knew that papaya's were so thirsty. Another student was very excited to discover how eggplants grow and was meticulous in making sure she didn't forget to water any of the plants.