St Raphael’s Growing Outside

Thursday23rdNovember2017

Weather:

Children:

Year 2

Can we compost it?

Today in Growing Outside, as Year two had been studying materials we thought it might be a good idea to have a look at materials that we use in the garden.

But this time it wasn’t about making features in the garden, it was about making COMPOST!

So, we played the YES, NO, MAYBE compost game!

I had brought in with me a wide selection of different materials, and the children had to take turns pulling them out of my bag like a lucky dip! Then they needed to think for themselves whether it would make good compost or not. If they weren’t sure they were able to ask their friends!

But first, what is COMPOST? Well, it’s a special kind of stuff that we make to grow our plants in. It’s much better for plants than ordinary SOIL because it should have lots of nutrients and minerals in it – just like a balanced diet but for plants! The plants can “eat” all the goodness when it gets dissolved in water and they suck it up with their roots.

Good compost is a nice mixture of lots of different things, and we rely on worms and other mini insects and organisms to help us make it by mixing it, eating it and pooping it out!

Some of the materials we looked at were fairly obvious – like an old apple core, but things like bread and a cooked fish finger were less so! We learnt that anything cooked, and that includes bread, is not good for making compost because it attracts Vermin who might spread diseases (Rats!).

Things made from natural materials like tissues, newspaper, cardboard, wood and cotton (even tea bags!) were fine, as long as they were in little pieces – worms can’t eat a whole branch very easily!

Things like silver foil, plastic coated magazines, crisp wrappers and a bone were definitely not OK for making compost. We had lots of interesting discussions about rubber bands – (these are made from a tree) and 100% cotton pants (cotton is a plant!) – some things went in the maybe pile as we weren’t sure.

Then we went outside and searched around the playground for things which we then sorted into Yes, No and Maybe.

Year 2 were excellent at listening and understood really well about what we can use to make compost by the end of the session. Well done!

Mandy