January 15th 2017
Invitation to Parents and Guardians to Join us on our School Tree-Planting Day in Seagrange Park on Wednesday, January 31st
Dear Parents and Guardians,
While you may know our school has won many green flags, you may not be aware that St. Laurence NS has been a leader in environmental education over many years. In 2017 our school came first in Ireland in the Eco-UNESCO Local to Global competition and we have won Repak and Electricity Association of Ireland national environmental awards as well as many regional awards from organisations such as Irish Aid. For the third year in a row, we are in SEAI's top twenty schools in the country for our Green Flag Tree project. Our Green Committee has represented the school to audiences of up to 600 people (including Government Ministers and Mayors) at the Helix Theatre and the Mansion House.
One area in which the children at St. Laurence’s have been especially involved has been in a number of tree-planting initiatives. We planted native tree plantations at the front of our Senior Building in 1999 and our Junior Building in 2015. When we ran out of space on our school grounds we teamed up with 8 other schools and planted 300 trees in Seagrange Park, Baldoyle (adjacent to the Senior Building) at our “Tree Academy” last year.
In 2018 we are planning a Tree Planting Day to give all the children in the school an opportunity to plant a tree and in addition will hold a further Tree Academy, which will take place on 7th March. This Tree Planting Day will help towards achieving our sixth International Green Flag, for work on “Global Citizenship, Litter and Waste”. We will work in collaboration with other schools, and hope to plant a total of 3,000 trees this time, one for every primary school in Ireland! The children will plant their trees in Seagrange Park where we hope they will be able to enjoy them for years to come. We are working on this project in partnership with Fingal County Council who will be providing help and trees. Our project will also link with children in over 100 countries around the world as part of a UN-backed project, “Plant-for-the-Planet”.
One of the best climate actions a community can take is to plant trees. Trees not only absorb carbon and other harmful gases while releasing oxygen, they provide a whole host of other benefits, including improving ecosystems by creating habitats and food; reducing flooding (a particular problem in this park) and soil erosion; reducing noise and air pollution; enhancing well-being and local scenery and even increasing the value of property.
The Tree Planting Day event will take place rain or shine so please ensure that your child on this day has
A rainproof coat A change of footwear, such as wellies/football boots or old runners as there will be mud. Gloves and tools will be provided – but they can bring gardening gloves from home if they wish Please turn over ........... While Fingal Co. Council will have prepared the ground, it can be a bit of work digging the holes especially for the younger children and we would greatly appreciate some adult help on the day. If you were free to join us on Wednesday 31st January during the course of the day for an hour or longer please fill out the form overleaf and return it to your child’s class teacher by Wednesday 17th .
Le gach dea guí,
_________________________
Ms. Orla Farrell
Green Schools Coordinator, An Taisce Climate Ambassador
You can find more information about this project on
https://greenschoolsireland.org/
www.Easytreesie.com
And our school Green web pages on http://room5stlaurence.weebly.com/our-newest-green-flag-project-trees.html
I, (own name) ___________________ , Parent of (child’s name) __________________________
who is in _______Class, volunteer to help out with the School’s tree-planting event in Seagrange Park on Wednesday, 31st January.
Phone No.________________________ Email address __________________________
Tick the box(es) when you will be available and you will be emailed with further details.
q 9.30 – 10.30 First & Fifth classes
q 10.30 -11.30 Junior Infants and Third classes
q 11.30 – 12.30 Senior Infants and Fourth classes
1.00 – 2.00 Second and Sixth classes
Important news coming soon re; our upcoming planting programme in Seagrange Park!
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Throw it away?
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Hi everybody, looking forward to Tree Day this week, we are off to the Community Gardens to see how our oak trees are getting on in our nursery. |
A message from SEAI, Nov. 2017
Congratulations for completing your entry submission You're now in the running for consideration. Check the awards information for details of when announcements will be made. In the meantime, why don't you tell your network you're in the running for an award!
In May 2017 we published this; Go over to easyas12tree.com and read our brilliant news this week! - a clue; Look out Mansion House, here we come! find out how we got on on our new site!
Here is our entry to "National Spring Clean 2017; it's great news!
We have planted 300 trees in our local park with our school UN-backed project, easyas12tree.com. It is the first ever Plant-for-the-Planet.com plantation in Ireland. (We aim to plant one tree for every one of Ireland's million children) We keep it clean by bringing litter-pickers when we go to the park to play tennis. Most children spend ten minutes in the playground and our chosen team with gloves and a bag go to our Tiny Forest and pick any litter that may have blown in. We did our inaugural one on Tuesday 25/04/2017; there was zero litter there, but our trees planted in January are all growing beautifully even though they were flooded for 6 weeks!
We have planted 300 trees in our local park with our school UN-backed project, easyas12tree.com. It is the first ever Plant-for-the-Planet.com plantation in Ireland. (We aim to plant one tree for every one of Ireland's million children) We keep it clean by bringing litter-pickers when we go to the park to play tennis. Most children spend ten minutes in the playground and our chosen team with gloves and a bag go to our Tiny Forest and pick any litter that may have blown in. We did our inaugural one on Tuesday 25/04/2017; there was zero litter there, but our trees planted in January are all growing beautifully even though they were flooded for 6 weeks!
Want to enjoy our newest film series, "The Irish Tree Trail"? It launched on Tree Week, March 6th 2017 over on our new Green Flag Tree Project pages, easyas12Tree.com. This site has got a bit too full according to my son, who is in IT and knows what he is talking about! Too much talking, not enough tree planting I guess.
What a great success was our TREE ACADEMY! Thanks to all at the Munich HQ of Plant-for-the-Planet and especially to Plant-for-the-Planet UK for their sterling help and advice, not just on Academy day but in training our young first class in their own Junior training day. We are putting together a new film with all our photos with our Senior School tree team for March 10th, watch this space. Also you will love the photos of our Cape Town and Johannesburg new friends.
Thank you to all at Fingal County Council who are sponsoring our first ever Tree Academy with 300 saplings, space in our local park and some helpers to make sure we can dig the holes!
Thanks so much also to all the staff at Grange Builders Baldoyle this week who have furnished us with a set of top-of-the-range gardening gloves for our tree-planting! If it stays this cold they will keep our hands warm too!
Enjoy a new preview for the New Year; Holly! |
Congratulations. You have arrived at the pages of our Green School Tree Project - we keep winning prizes with our Projects focusing on our tiny school forests and its sister programme, SymmeTREE where we have been matching the trees we plant in school with more in poorer countries.
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We are working on our first GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP flag; like charity, citizenship begins at home. We are in fact the "Wooden Spoon" holders of Europe for tree-planting at present in Ireland, with less than 1 per cent of our land in native forest. We thought we would make a start by finding out what were the native trees of Ireland so that we could find out what were the best ones for children to plant. Here is a preview of our new film, "The Irish Tree Trail". We are looking forward to launching the film during National Tree Week, 2017
It's a new term and a new year of our project now we are into the planting season!
Calling Room 5 First Class parents!
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Hope you enjoy the video of Ruby, Oisin and Brona on the stage at the Helix. What a performance!
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Enjoy this little fable; spot the trees! Sharon was in Dublin this week and I heard her give a talk in DIT in the old church, also St. Laurence's. She had lots of tips for getting things done well while having little breaks to breathe, look around, say little prayers wishing others well...you will enjoy her voice on this video.
If you are looking for a great day out tomorrow May 1st, why not go along to our "Forest Friends" Maypole festival at one o clock at the ABC in Drumcondra, just beside the railway station! Here is the Program :
1pm : Tai chi performers
1pm15 : Art workshop ( Martina Doyle)
2pm : Puppet theater ( No strings theatre, Martin Cahill)
3 pm : Irish dancers, To be confirmed
During the whole afternoon :
Free activities :
- Facepainting
- Target game
- Guess the number of candies game
- Elf photobooth
Other activities :
Raffle : 1euro a ticket
Celtic coconut shy : 50 cent /3 tries to win a gift
Food and drinks : 50 cent per piece of cake or a drink
TREE CHEERS FOR IRISH AID
Here is me, Orla visiting the Foundation for Sustainable Development's PEFO programme in Jinja, Uganda. The women have formed an educational co-operative and have set up a business making heat-retention cookers. They saved lots of fuel and meant much less wood needed to be cut down and collected from the forests, a job often done by children after school.
....Heat! - it is hot on the White Nile - I arrived with many more layers of modest clothing but was coming down with a fever, very common in this part of the Tropics so I was busy sipping water keeping cool. The women told my daughter, who was working as an engineer with the Foundation improving cook-stove design, that they liked that I sat down with them on the floor; they did not realise I was afraid if I passed out on my high stool I would crack my head off the floor and ruin everybody's workshop!
Their project was super-cool however. I love their cookers and use two of them all the time since I got back to slow-cook dinners, saving water, energy and the one I love best of all, time!
25th April
We've sent a request to those who just ran a Climate Academy in the U.S. to get some help!
Climate Solutions
Thank you, your submission has been received.
Looking forward to talking on the Enviro programme tomorrow afternoon on NEAR FM with John Haughton, whose special guest is the Dublin City Biodiversity officer. Check out Dublin City's brilliant set of instructions on How to Set up a Tree nursery here.
http://www.dublincity.ie/sites/default/files/content//RecreationandCulture/DublinCityParks/Biodiversity/Documents/Make%20a%20tree%20nursery.pdf
And here is the plan for Dublin in the coming years!
http://www.dublincity.ie/sites/default/files/content/RecreationandCulture/DublinCityParks/Biodiversity/Documents/DublinCityBiodiversityActionPlan2015-2020.pdf
Action 10 of 29 is " Evaluate the biodiversity potential of public parks participating in the Green Flag Award Scheme"; perhaps we can help?
Bravo Dublin!
There are many mentions of our corner of Dublin, including this;
"The River Mayne forms part of Dublin City Council’s boundary with Fingal County Council, and flows into Baldoyle Bay, which is designated as a Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area."
It refers to the European Biodiversity strategy to 2020, which you can read here. It is an ambitious plan; since 13m ha of tropical forests are cleared each year, it needs to be. It calls for citizens to take action and become conservationists; well that's good so, we are on track!
Congrats to all those involved in getting Green Flag awards in seven parks last summer in the Republic of Ireland, including several in Dublin.
"This year Green Flag Awards were given to Poppintree Park (Dublin City Council), Bushy Park (Dublin City Council),Malahide Demesne (Fingal County Council), Millennium Park (Fingal County Council),Grangegorman Military Cemetery (Office of Public Works) and St. Stephen’s Green (Office of Public Works).
Commenting on the awards Margaret Gormley, chief park superintendent, noted “The Green Flag is very important because it sets a standard for all green spaces, and, for everyone involved in maintenance and management, to work towards. It sends a good message to the public as well as the team that we are achieving a high standard”.
Following submission of a management plan and action plan for each entry the sites are then visited by up to three judges. In 2015 there were over 700 judges who assessed the spaces on eight criteria including horticultural standards, cleanliness, sustainability and community involvement."
Aha, that is us; community involvement! We want to help! We love Green Flags!
Read more: http://www.growtrade.ie/six-irish-parks-receive-green-flag-awards/#ixzz46mcuHoYf
19th April
Hi everybody. I started a proper blog; we have been using this page as a Campaign Diary. No difference really I suppose except that over on the new blog page things look as a blog should.
I will continue to do our updates here as this is the link all our teachers have.
We are looking forward to our chance to show our project in the Department of Education and Science.
This week we had a great Green Schools Meeting.
The FIRST SCOTS PINE SEEDLING has germinated. It looks really fragile. It is going to be a bit of work keeping it alive, I feel a bit like being in charge of a new baby. Ah well. I did that four times and they are ,,,well they will be in three weeks...four young adults with degrees. We can do it. As with bringing up children though it takes a village, that is it takes lots of help and support. We are happy to have the support of "Forest Friends" with whom I am meeting on Friday next to view the Horse Chestnut saplings!
We have published a new slideshow of our poem!
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dZdOyTCsTl_GqvvsN59GJ6sGkq_JAcDX-j0jbrpuD-A/pub?start=false&loop=true&delayms=3000
Such exciting news; we are receiving a plaque from Irish Aid for our work on our project on May 17th! Well done to everybody who has worked so hard!
To celebrate we have donated a tree
Thanks a lot for your tree donation!Your donation has been registered with the following number:
SPEB-0009-0628-0This is what's going to happen next:
Here you can find your tree-certificate
Enjoy our poem about Mother Earth, presented by children from First and Fourth class!
We've sent a request to those who just ran a Climate Academy in the U.S. to get some help!
Climate Solutions
Thank you, your submission has been received.
Looking forward to talking on the Enviro programme tomorrow afternoon on NEAR FM with John Haughton, whose special guest is the Dublin City Biodiversity officer. Check out Dublin City's brilliant set of instructions on How to Set up a Tree nursery here.
http://www.dublincity.ie/sites/default/files/content//RecreationandCulture/DublinCityParks/Biodiversity/Documents/Make%20a%20tree%20nursery.pdf
And here is the plan for Dublin in the coming years!
http://www.dublincity.ie/sites/default/files/content/RecreationandCulture/DublinCityParks/Biodiversity/Documents/DublinCityBiodiversityActionPlan2015-2020.pdf
Action 10 of 29 is " Evaluate the biodiversity potential of public parks participating in the Green Flag Award Scheme"; perhaps we can help?
Bravo Dublin!
There are many mentions of our corner of Dublin, including this;
"The River Mayne forms part of Dublin City Council’s boundary with Fingal County Council, and flows into Baldoyle Bay, which is designated as a Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area."
It refers to the European Biodiversity strategy to 2020, which you can read here. It is an ambitious plan; since 13m ha of tropical forests are cleared each year, it needs to be. It calls for citizens to take action and become conservationists; well that's good so, we are on track!
Congrats to all those involved in getting Green Flag awards in seven parks last summer in the Republic of Ireland, including several in Dublin.
"This year Green Flag Awards were given to Poppintree Park (Dublin City Council), Bushy Park (Dublin City Council),Malahide Demesne (Fingal County Council), Millennium Park (Fingal County Council),Grangegorman Military Cemetery (Office of Public Works) and St. Stephen’s Green (Office of Public Works).
Commenting on the awards Margaret Gormley, chief park superintendent, noted “The Green Flag is very important because it sets a standard for all green spaces, and, for everyone involved in maintenance and management, to work towards. It sends a good message to the public as well as the team that we are achieving a high standard”.
Following submission of a management plan and action plan for each entry the sites are then visited by up to three judges. In 2015 there were over 700 judges who assessed the spaces on eight criteria including horticultural standards, cleanliness, sustainability and community involvement."
Aha, that is us; community involvement! We want to help! We love Green Flags!
Read more: http://www.growtrade.ie/six-irish-parks-receive-green-flag-awards/#ixzz46mcuHoYf
19th April
Hi everybody. I started a proper blog; we have been using this page as a Campaign Diary. No difference really I suppose except that over on the new blog page things look as a blog should.
I will continue to do our updates here as this is the link all our teachers have.
We are looking forward to our chance to show our project in the Department of Education and Science.
This week we had a great Green Schools Meeting.
The FIRST SCOTS PINE SEEDLING has germinated. It looks really fragile. It is going to be a bit of work keeping it alive, I feel a bit like being in charge of a new baby. Ah well. I did that four times and they are ,,,well they will be in three weeks...four young adults with degrees. We can do it. As with bringing up children though it takes a village, that is it takes lots of help and support. We are happy to have the support of "Forest Friends" with whom I am meeting on Friday next to view the Horse Chestnut saplings!
We have published a new slideshow of our poem!
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dZdOyTCsTl_GqvvsN59GJ6sGkq_JAcDX-j0jbrpuD-A/pub?start=false&loop=true&delayms=3000
Such exciting news; we are receiving a plaque from Irish Aid for our work on our project on May 17th! Well done to everybody who has worked so hard!
To celebrate we have donated a tree
Thanks a lot for your tree donation!Your donation has been registered with the following number:
SPEB-0009-0628-0This is what's going to happen next:
Here you can find your tree-certificate
Enjoy our poem about Mother Earth, presented by children from First and Fourth class!
We kicked off our clear up of our plantations today with our #2minparkclean on the way to tennis at Trackside!.
April and Operation Elimination;
In Tree news; 2 lemon trees being planted in South Africa today as part of Project SymmeTREE by South African children we know!
We are looking forward to our 2-minute Park Clean tomorrow and another on Wednesday.
Who can make the best letters using the rubbish they pick up in their 2 minutes.
Nothing sharp, nothing filthy mind....and we will be using the gloves. Go team.
March 30
We are tweeting as much as the birds, over on @WildAREness!
Most interesting developments in the UK, where efforts have been made to increase leaf cover in London by 5 %. Here is an interesting link about Urban Forests.
We have been talking to the EU commission and to Leargas about our hook-up with the Plant for the Planet project. Now that is exciting!
We had some vandalism to our new project over the holidays. We will go and check it out on our Park Clean, it was probably a dog!
We are in touch with a neighbouring school with a gift of 2 more trees, we hope to get them in the ground now-now!
Our project hastens slowly. Mpola Mpola is what they say in Uganda. Better than tomorrow, tomorrow!
March 23rd 2016.
Great news.
Today we joined the World Wildlife Fund.
We made a donation towards Earth Hour to plant ten seedlings in Tanzania. Some of the helpers for WildAREness, Ronan who designed our logo, Bill who provided the forestry advice and Anita who did lots of filming of forest work had a candlelit dinner. We donated some money to mark this occasion. They sent us this message!
Thank you for helping WWFYour reference number is: WWF-20160324-9886703
We have also sent some Happy Easter messages to some of our new friends in Fingal Co. Col, Forest Friends and WeForest. We are talking to Plant for the Planet about a Planting Party in the next growing season for 300 trees!
World Happiness Day today! We logged our project on the site; this day is being promoted by the U.N.; what a great idea! It is only four years old but it is catching on!
In Tree news; 2 lemon trees being planted in South Africa today as part of Project SymmeTREE by South African children we know!
We are looking forward to our 2-minute Park Clean tomorrow and another on Wednesday.
Who can make the best letters using the rubbish they pick up in their 2 minutes.
Nothing sharp, nothing filthy mind....and we will be using the gloves. Go team.
March 30
We are tweeting as much as the birds, over on @WildAREness!
Most interesting developments in the UK, where efforts have been made to increase leaf cover in London by 5 %. Here is an interesting link about Urban Forests.
We have been talking to the EU commission and to Leargas about our hook-up with the Plant for the Planet project. Now that is exciting!
We had some vandalism to our new project over the holidays. We will go and check it out on our Park Clean, it was probably a dog!
We are in touch with a neighbouring school with a gift of 2 more trees, we hope to get them in the ground now-now!
Our project hastens slowly. Mpola Mpola is what they say in Uganda. Better than tomorrow, tomorrow!
March 23rd 2016.
Great news.
Today we joined the World Wildlife Fund.
We made a donation towards Earth Hour to plant ten seedlings in Tanzania. Some of the helpers for WildAREness, Ronan who designed our logo, Bill who provided the forestry advice and Anita who did lots of filming of forest work had a candlelit dinner. We donated some money to mark this occasion. They sent us this message!
Thank you for helping WWFYour reference number is: WWF-20160324-9886703
We have also sent some Happy Easter messages to some of our new friends in Fingal Co. Col, Forest Friends and WeForest. We are talking to Plant for the Planet about a Planting Party in the next growing season for 300 trees!
World Happiness Day today! We logged our project on the site; this day is being promoted by the U.N.; what a great idea! It is only four years old but it is catching on!
- TAKE ACTION
- WHAT PEOPLE ARE DOING
Planting tiny forests in our school, our local parks and spreading the word as part of Plant for the Planet 1m-tree goal per country! Ireland is EVEN worse than the UK; we are 11% and the UK I believe 12% so we have a bit of planting to do to catch up with EU 33% or even the global 25% but hey, it is fun! The WildAREness Project @ WildAREness
Orla Farrell, Dublin, Ireland 23 Mar 2016, 10:56
Celebrating World Water Day!
We are going to need to keep our new trees watered over their first few months. Remember how they did it at the fire house when we called in? Watch and see!
What a great time we had planting our beech trees with Therese and Matt of Fingal County Council Parks Department. It was great to see how it is done by the experts! When we got back we made a How-To video for other schools so they would know as well. We planted all the ESB trees today; Birch, Rowan and Scots Pine. The birch were small but the others were smaller, only seeds. Fingers crossed they will take, we are leaving them in a safe courtyard spot to spend their holidays!
I am experimenting with a new blog format here; let me know what you think about the post about Proclamation Day today.
15th March; Glorious weather for our big day....yes another one, where we go on our very first planting session in Baldoyle Racecourse Park.
Did you enjoy our story on John's Near FM programme this afternoon, where there was a lot of interesting talk about forests from Violetta and Joe, his guests and our project was given not only a thumbs up, but a pledge of a quantity of horse chestnut trees.... a THOUSAND! Wow! Now that's exciting! Let's get the wellies out!
I've put a lot of our new photos over on the page for March and Patrick's Day.
13th March
Beautiful Solutions for our Climate Future
Exciting news; we have registered our initiative in support of the Sustainable Development Global Goals. Perhaps we are the smallest initiative on the planet! Here is more information about the partnerships.
and
KNOWLEDGE PLATFORM
SDGs Partnerships - initiative registered #11232 (reference #74352)
MESSAGE DETAILS
SubjectSDGs Partnerships - initiative registered #11232
Date/time initially receivedMar 13, 2016 10:17 AM
Most recentMar 13, 2016 10:17 AM
StatusNew.
What a great bit of Green work was done yesterday.
Thanks to the children who blessed the Forest....
Who said the prayer to music, "Our Lady of the WildAREness"...
Who planted all the class trees....
Who rang out the bells and danced the Fairy Reel...
Who whispered a secret to the trees (remembering our old story about Labhraigh Loinseach with the horse's ears; we know those trees won't keep our secret! They are our advertisers you see!
And the great show that went on of Forest Entertainment, with songs of Wiggly worms, Leprachauns and other Forest Creatures.
11th March
Today is the day! Get on your wellies everybody, we are all set!
Pat has been digging the holes! The fruit trees are waiting patiently in the Senior Courtyard having been carefully watered by Praise and Josh yesterday. The beech trees are happy waiting to move house. We also have a Scots Pine and Rowan being planted today; in milk cartons!
They are the babies! Let's get planting!
A gentle breeze and no rain is forecast, how lovely!
St Patrick's Day
We will be "Greening" the WildAREness next Wednesday for the festival!
Lights out for Earth Hour!
Last year more than 7000 cities and towns across 152 countries and territories took part in the campaign that began in Sydney Australia in 2007. Iconic buildings around the world will go dark include the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, and the world brightest single location, the Strip in Las Vegas. During the Green Minister for the Environment, John Gormley’s reign, many public buildings in Ireland, including the Customs House and the rock of Cashel, went dark. The campaign in Ireland this year will rely in individuals to take part in their own homes and businesses.Here is a brilliant idea from the UK for fundraising with city parks.
So exciting, we tweeted this;
WildAREness @WildAREness 2h2 hours ago WildAREness Retweeted Fergal Behan We got two for our classroom! We don't drink a lot of coffee in First Class in Baldoyle - we will use milk cartons!
Guess what we are planting on Friday?
I was looking at this 10-year old ad; so many schools planted trees in 2006, I wonder how tall they are now? We ould ask!
So what's up Mother Earth, why are you complaining this International Womens' Day...?
A few things....
Problems; Flooding Solutions; Trees suck water, sorted.
Too much carbon....Trees suck it up too...
Too many greenhouse gases....they purify those too...
Temperatures too hot....Trees cool us down...
High winds and storms...trees are shelterbelts...
Erosion...trees knit the ground together...
Extinction...trees are homes and shelter...
No flowers please. Trees.
Is it easy? YES WE CAN! ...Find a space,
Dig a hole,
Plant a tree,
Repeat.
8th March; A pond. We are not forgetting we would like a pond at our WildAREness area. Think about that everybody.
Hey everybody! We have signed up for Earth Hour this month! Time to sign up here dig out the candles.
You will enjoy this optimistic video from TED by Al Gore. His film back a decade ago launched our green flag programme.
Here is the preamble;
"Al Gore has three questions about climate change and our future. First: Do we have to change? Each day, global-warming pollution traps as much heat energy as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. This trapped heat is leading to stronger storms and more extreme floods, he says: "Every night on the TV news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation." Second question: Can we change? We've already started. So then, the big question: Will we change? In this challenging, inspiring talk, Gore says yes. "When any great moral challenge is ultimately resolved into a binary choice between what is right and what is wrong, the outcome is foreordained because of who we are as human beings," he says. "That is why we're going to win this."
A scary movie for Mother's Day from Julia Roberts
March 5th;
Here is a link to the Panasonic Tree project. Read about our National Biodiversity Plans here. You can download a copy of the plans.
The minister commented at the launch of the current plan,
" It is particularly important to raise that awareness with children, as they will bring that with them throughout their lives and help pass on the key messages. In my former career as a teacher, it gave me great pleasure to organise events such as nature walks, in order to open children’s eyes to our natural environment and its importance."
You can find out about the Fingal local plan here.
We have joined the national Grow It Yourself organisation, GIY. Here is their latest newsletter with lots of gardening tips;
Hey, we have been invited to be on a radio show in two weeks by our new Forest Friends, on Near FM. Wow, we had better get practicing our new poem!
Check out our poster!
Albert Einstein; "If you don't explain it simply enough, you don't understand it well"FAQs about growing your own WILDareNESS
Pause for a song break people, an Irish schoolgirl brings us one of Ireland's many glorious moments.
Snowdrops and daffodils,
Butterflies and Bees...
we are the proud owners of an ORCHARD everybody. We will be finishing it on Friday March 11th, there are 3 trees left to plant.
Is there a lot of maintenance? Apart from watering the trees in the unlikely event of them drying out over the first two or three years, zero maintenance. A wilderness is, as it says in the name, wild.
How long does it take to do?; ah, well, you can plant a tree in two minutes if you are quick digging the hole. If you had lots of spades everyone could start on the whistle and your forest would be planted in that time. But why hurry? Make it a planting party. Do like us and have some elderflower cordial and enjoy the moment. A perfect wilderness would be remote, solitary, vast....but since nothing is perfect in the Universe, according to Stephen Hawking, you will need your imagination to fill in what's missing, "Wilderness is the preservation of the world,"
Wilderness may need to be in your state of mind, our brains are very complex, I bet we will manage!
Time for another songbreak, featuring Napoleon. Do you know that he is the man who planted vast oak forests in France, provision for future warships. When they started making them from steel, they used the oak to make wine barrels instead. France has brilliant forest cover, thanks Napoleon, that is one good thing he did anyway.
A quote from one of my very favourite books, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" on this, World Book Day, about another wilderness, popular apparently back in the 1800s in these islands!
"Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take some refreshment; but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not very politely, declined eating anything; and then rising up, said to Elizabeth --
"Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favour me with your company."
"Go, my dear," cried her mother, "and shew her ladyship about the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage."
Elizabeth obeyed, and, running into her own room for her parasol, attended her noble guest downstairs. As they passed through the hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors into the dining-parlour and drawing-room, and pronouncing them, after a short survey, to be decent looking rooms, walked on.
Her carriage remained at the door, and Elizabeth saw that her waiting-woman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk that led to the copse;"
We had better remember to bring our parasols when we go out to walk our lands! It is good to know that walking around a wilderness has been popular these long years! Open Call to Teachers 2016FÉILTE open call for submissionsMany thanks for you submission for FÉILTE 2016. The closing date for submissions is 5pm on Friday, 4 March 2016. We will be in touch soon after with news on your submission.
Today we are putting in a submission for Joanna Coughlan and Orla Farrell to take part in Féilte, the teachers' showcase next Autumn to tell teachers all over Ireland about the school's tree-planting initiative. We enjoyed the RDS so much last week we want to go back on a Saturday.
Here is our entry. Wish us luck!
The WILDareNESS Project; Every Schoolchild Plants Twin Trees by 2020
Description of work proposed for showcasing
We answered the call of countless world leaders to act to achieve the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. With UN-sponsored, children-led “Plant for the Planet” whose target is to plant 1m trees in every country, we joined 100,000 children in planting almost 15m trees worldwide. We planted two tiny forests of 100 square metres and start our third, an orchard in our local park. We sponsored equivalent planting in Tanzania, South Sudan and Brazil. We partner with several local and national organisations. Our goal - every schoolchild in Ireland plants a tree by 2020, sponsoring another in the developing world.
How will this project celebrate and showcase innovation in teaching and learning at FÉILTE? 50 words
"To do is to understand". We had a planting party, it’s easy to do. All we needed was a little piece of ground to use and some saplings. It’s fast; we planted our forest in an hour. It’s cheap, we got the trees from sponsors. We will show you how.
What would teachers and members of the public learn from this showcase at FÉILTE? 50 words
The Problem; These islands -11% tree cover- currently win the wooden spoon in Europe
Our Brilliant Solution: Taking tiny steps worked for us - inspired by INTO programme "Wellness 365"! Afforesting to tackle climate change is especially effective in Ireland; trees grow seven times faster than elsewhere in the EU.
We had to boil down our blog, now as big as a book to 200 words! It was a very good exercise. And a great opportunity to think very hard about what we are doing and what we want to achieve. Below are some of the questions we are thinking about and answering as we gather information.
We have been checking statistics....there are over a million children in Ireland!
Minister Fitzgerald stated: “this is an immensely valuable national resource offering unprecedented potential for Ireland’s future.".
So if every child in Ireland planted a tree we would exceed the target of "Plant for the Planet" nicely!
We talked about poorer children in Ireland and how they may need extra help organising tree planting, especially travellers. We will contact the traveller organisation and see what they suggest.
Check out OWLS. the Dublin Childrens' Nature organisation.
We learned about the 2 minute beach clean at EXPO. Find out about it and watch a two minute film from the BBC news here! We thought, hey, what a great idea! That is EXACTLY what we always do when we go to the park! So we thought, let's start a worldwide campaign! Oh wait a minute, we have a Forest campaign going already. ok well.....But it is the same thing. "The Beach Is a Great Place to Start" says their founder. So we will join them and add on another one of our tiny but brilliant ideas!
Best of all, you get to make ART with your litter before you throw it away! Read the safety page first, all brought to us by An Taisce Here.
We are hoping to help out with the Baldoyle Racecourse Allotment expansion; they want to encourage bees....Here is an interesting tip for not being stressed from the One Good Tip campaign currently on the bus shelters by the Health and Safety Authority,
"When I want to feel well I go out into our back garden and talk to the bees. Bees have always been part of my family. When I was growing up, they were there, humming among the apple trees in the orchard. My father let them know as each of his children was born. If anyone went far away or came home from far away, they bees had to be informed. It was all part of a belief among beekeepers that the bees must be told about their human family’s life events or else they will take offence and fly away.
So the bees knew when I got married. I have my own beehive now, ruled by a queen from one of my father’s hives. My wife loves that we have our own raw honey and lectures me on its health benefits.
I tell her how therapeutic it is talk to the bees. Whenever I feel stressed I take my worries out to the beehive.
The bees are busy, of course, but I know that some level they hear me. Any day now there will be a new arrival into our house and the bees will be the first to know."
Now there is an idea for us all; when we are a bit snowed under with work in the classroom, let's go out and tell the bees in the WILDareNESS, we can expect them soon now that all our new wild flowers are planted!
Another of their tips is CYCLING!
Parents; are you aware of the bike-to-work scheme? You may enjoy cycling with your child to school!
We had a new one of these in the staff room yesterday. You can get half of the cost of your bike back in returned tax! Thank you, Irish taxpayers!
Cutting carbon tips; for all those heading out on their bikes to school, this week the RSA sent me these great suggestions for safety. We are continuing our efforts to cut carbon with several initiatives coming up;
Scoot on Wednesday on next week,
Cycle on Wednesday drive coming up in May.
Walk on Wednesday drive coming up in June. We will all be very fit after all that!
Check out Irish Aid and the great animation explaining the Global Goals for 2030 here.
The text of the Global goals is to be found in full here on the UN website. They are heartening to read, bold and ambitious and since we are writing our new Proclamation for a new century this week we need search no further! All the thinking has been done for us! It needs only to be written in green, white and orange!
We are working on these goals specifically in our project;
Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
13.1 Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries
13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning
13.3 Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning
13.a Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible
13.b Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities
* Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.
Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
15.1 By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains and drylands, in line with obligations under international agreements
15.2 By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally
15.3 By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world
15.5 Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species 15.9 By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts
15.a Mobilize and significantly increase financial resources from all sources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems
15.b Mobilize significant resources from all sources and at all levels to finance sustainable forest management and provide adequate incentives to developing countries to advance such management, including for conservation and reforestation
March 1 2016; Congrats to all involved in today's great tree-planting endeavour and especially to our old friend Dale Treadwell. What a joy to have our very own orchard with apple, pear, cherry and plum trees! We planted them to mark the birth of some special babies to the school staff this year, new children and grandchildren Masie, Finn, Michael and Evelyn who has just started school this year in Africa, daughter of past pupil Fiona.
We were on RTE News! Oh wow. We featured on the News 2day programme last Thursday. Check us out on RTE player here.
We have so much to learn, getting ready for our presentation. We were learning off our new poem today. Our trick was, adding actions to make it fun and easier!
Feel like colouring with all this rain? You can print off some tricky colouring pages here or if you want a little less mindfulness easier ones here .
Thanks to Margaret for sending us in these videos about forest gardens for bees from Monty Don on the BBC. One is almost an hour long, warning you!
So February is over; now to plan bee. I spoke to Louise tonight of the Baldoyle Racecourse gardenres' group who have helped us so much in the past. We are discussing planting expeditions, shelter belts for the raised beds and planting of low native plants to encourage bee visits.
Forest Friends ; are doing some interesting work with local schools such as Santa Sabena; for example you can learn everything you every wanted to know about the Alder and more!
New; Follow wildAREness on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/orlamaryfarrell/! Lots of green ideas, handy for St. Patrick's Day!
Ireland's second wilderness project launched | News | That is us! I am just playing with the headline there from our wilderness in Mayo, one of the most exciting in Europe!
Ours is a nano-wilderness I guess!
Learning about mitigation.
Minister Kelly stated: “Mitigation effort is a global responsibility ...however it is important that developed countries such as Ireland provide leadership in terms of their contribution and the framework underpinned by this Bill will enable such a response to be developed well into the future”. - See more
The WildAREness Project; growing tiny forests
–The European Union–The entire planet–The Island of Ireland–Total––
A third of the land is covered with trees50.00%
10.00%
050.00%
1
2
–
A quarter of the land is covered with trees50.00%
150.00%
10.00%
0
2
–
A tenth of the land is covered with trees0.00%
033.33%
166.67%
2
3
Greenhouse Gases; what you need to know, kids!
Parents may be interested in the other WildAREness project happening in Ireland, an article from the Independent here.
23rd Feb
Try our crossword here!
And here are the answers!http://www.puzzle-maker.com/crossword_FreeSolution.cgi
Táimíd ar an liosta Seachtain na Gaeilge!"; Imeachtai
11/03/2016
11:00 am - 1:00 pmTabhair cuairt ar ÁR nGarrán Fiáin
St Laurences NS
St. Laurence N.S, Co. Átha Cliath
Now we are on Twitter! Check out @WildAREness!
Check out global Forest Watch!
22nd Feb
Rewilding Europe...Ireland is the first project of its kind!
21st Feb
Time at the weekend? Follow the trail of Native Trees in St. Anne's Park. If you want to download this leaflet first you can ring back the bark rubbings, or just put them on pages you label, I will give people in my class a night off written work!
Mark of the GAA told us about the huge festival to be on in Racecourse park!
We are going to find out more about it!
Dale has been in touch with options for the WildAREness area. Thanks Dale!
19th Feb
Do you know our forest event will be part of Seachtain na Gaeilge! Get cracking on the green items search now!
I
Exciting news! The National Tree Council is advertising our event today! Wow! Time to dig out the green clothes folks - remember;
Borrow or DIY
Do Not buy!
I am off to buy fruit trees now!
Growing things, an article about the very young from CBeebees (BBC) may interest parents.
A note of explanation; this "blog" is our Campaign Diary, unedited. We have too much writing, too many films etc. nobody would want to read it all, but we need to keep a record of what we are doing in our "journey" to enter the next stage of the One Good Idea project. It is a bit of fun. I am putting together everybody's ideas from everywhere about our Good, in fact Great, Idea. I saw this article about good habits, thinking of our Walk to School days. How about WOT; Walk on Tuesdays? WOT...walk ANOTHER day?
Think about this;
"It takes me 40 minutes to walk to work, and 25 minutes to get there on public transport. That’s an hour and 20 minutes of walking, but only 30 minutes out of my day. How’s that for time management....?"
I like this idea. It takes me an hour to cycle in and out to work and about 40 minutes in the car. So that is an hour of exercise and only 20 minutes out of my day. (Of course the good thing about cycling is that you don't get stressed out held up in traffic like I did last Friday when 3 cars tipped one another on the coast road and halted the traffic for 25 minutes!).
Over the half term perhaps some parents might think of enjoying the birds and trees in St. Anne's and other nearby parks at Parkrun?
It would all have been more fun if I had started planting trees at age 4 like we are in St. Laurence School maybe, but schools were different long ago! Everyone was still doing their best though. There were a lot fewer people on the planet when I was 4 so we have to think a little harder now about how we organize things. So let's get thinking and send me your ideas on the questionnaire above.
PS If you come across anything too silly here, let us know, something odd might have slipped in as we are adding to this all the time and we might be rushing. And children, if you find anything scary as you look for ideas, just x out of it and let us know, sometimes you might come across an odd strange thing, as Albert Einstein, that great cyclist said, the clever person ignores!
It's mid-term!
And - 3 degrees last night. I have not the cash to buy birdseed just now with all the tree-shopping. I feel guilty about throwing out the heels, I sometimes make them into garlic butter croutons. But this morning with that hard frost I saved a biscuit tray from the green bin collection and have it on my patio table for the birds.
No takers yet, I am a bit late I guess at 8.30 a.m. what with the birds having been awake since 4, I hope they eat them for their supper because by then the crusts will be going into the brown bin. Must not attract that R-A-T back. Not wanting to put anybody off. Wasn't it so interesting to hear from Brenda that the birds only have meals morning and evening? It makes it easier to be the caterers when we know this.
We met with a member of the Baldoyle Racecourse Community Gardeners today and we sent them this message; their allotments are so beautiful, there beside the cows (not foxes, just faraway cows in foxy colours....), the gorse and the sea. Well done local gardeners. They suggested that when we come on our visit we bring our seeds and use one of the community raised beds perhaps....need we be asked twice? Twenty eight lollipop trees on the way...Dale tells me tonight that Lidl and Aldi have fruit trees on sale this week for 5 euro!
Hi Community Gardeners!
Two of us teachers from the St. Laurence National School cycled over to see your fantastic facility today. It is just beautiful! We were so grateful for our award last year by the way! We are working hard on our school gardens and have started on a new project, Forest Are, 100 square metres of tiny forest in each of both the Junior and Senior school buildings, with staunch support from Marjorie. We are planting equivalent trees in the developing world. We are interested in starting a similar project nearby, perhaps when you are expanding there might be a corner there for our young trees to give you all a little shelter from the sea breezes?
February 17th, 2016
Today we signed up to host an event for NATIONAL TREE WEEK.
We are in the top twenty primary schools in Ireland in SEAI's current "One Good Idea" competition for our idea, "Forest Are"; we are growing a tiny 100 meter squared forest of native trees to encourage biodiversity.
Our tiny foresters will hold a ceremonial tree planting on the day, sing some green songs, recite a forest poem all dressed in green and with a strong Irish language element to mark Seachtain na Gaeilge.
Our aim is to encourage others to copy us; we have planted 2 Forest Ares so far and are planning our third. Through our project SYMMETREE IRELAND for every tree we plant here we plant another fruit tree in South Sudan or Tanzania through our partnerships.
It will be at 11 on March 11th! More fun for us all!
We have signed up for the NASA newsletter. Its website has startling pictures and advice on mitigating the problem. You will love their story on the nine-year old boy who planted the seed to plant a trillion trees. He has challenged us to plant a million trees in Ireland. How many Forest Ares is that ? 20,000 it appears, golly. We may need to call in the scouts for sure.
(It sounds like a lot but phew, it is only 625 in each of 32 counties. Now that is very different!)
Here is an interesting quote from the Earthwatch website.
"EARTHWATCH URBAN ECOSYSTEMS PROGRAM We are in the Anthropocene epoch, characterized by human domination of the Earth’s ecosystems. Today 54 percent of the people in the world live in urban areas, with a projected growth of 1.8 percent annually. Sustainability of urban communities and urban ecosystems in a world experiencing rapid change and unprecedented environmental degradation represents one of the biggest challenges we face."
We notice that AIB is sponsoring our competition. Maybe they could find the person who designed their logo back in I think 1972 when my father was a manager in their Dundrum branch and ask them for some book-of-Kells images for us. The Ark! Do you think they knew about global warming back then?
What a wonderful world!
15th February 2016
Exciting news! (What, MORE?). We are launching a National Tree Week event tomorrow! Watch this space!
Their website has super resources and films, our favourite one being,
How to Plant a Tree.
A big help to us and our film making! Adult and young adult readers may enjoy the story of the Man who Planted Trees, mentioned on the site.
They have an interesting tree sponsorship programme, but 50 euro is expensive and it is only available in County Cavan.
This site charges a minimum of 20 euro with no certificate.
We are so lucky today to have a workshop with Brenda Palmer, the Ecological Gardener, in Room 5 and 8
She taught us some interesting facts about birds. They can see predators behind them with their super eyesight!
.
She is doing a fantastic workshop with us about birds and trees.
The BEST news for us is that they like LEFTOVERS to eat. What a great idea!
We are going to collect bits and pieces for our bird feeders.
14th February 2016
Today is Valentine's Day, the day we launch our very own OuTREEch programme, SymeTREE Ireland, Is Féidir Linn Bheith Siméadrach (Yes We Can Do SymmeTREE). That name is a bit long, we will have to work on that.
I needed a few presents so what better than trees in the developing world, to match the ones we are growing in Ireland.
One donation for 20 trees was made today to Plant for the Planet in the name of my friend's new baby Oscar who was born on Friday!
Trees planted11.680.439Thank you for your Donation
Dear friend of Plant-for-the-Planet,
Thank you for supporting the children of Plant-for-the-Planet!
We are very happy about your donation! Your transaction number is SPEG 0008-7933-7.
Check out this U.N. tree counter! http://www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/treecounter
We are getting ready to do our presentation; How to Wake up your Mouth...on How to speak so that people want to Listen by Julian Treasure, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIho2S0ZahI
One donation was made to South Sudan, details to follow in due course. This is a tiny project being carried out by a young NGO worker who flies over there today. I made this donation in memory of my youngest brother, John Paul, who went missing in America when he was 24. It is a good thing to remember people who are no longer with us with trees, Anita Foley plants a tree every year in memory of her father.
And finally we make a further donation to WeForest in the name of Forest Are. I made this in the name of my niece Colette whose birthday it was on Monday. She is training in Trinity College to be a nurse, I think she will like this present better than flowers, she sees a lot of flowers in hospitals and she has so much to do caring for people that I think it would make her tired if she had to also mind a bunch of flowers, having to change the water which they say does get filled with bacteria quite easily.
14-Feb-2016 12:59:38 GMT
Hello Orla Farrell,
This email confirms that you have donated $20.00 USD to WeForest ([email protected]) using PayPal.
While I am donating, I will donate the price of 3 trees to my great-niece Evelyn to be planted in school. Her mother went to our school, so did her aunts and her grandmother was on the Board of Management for years and years so I think Evelyn would love to know there are trees growing here with her name on them. I will ask Dale about the cost of trees and we will put them in the Forest Are on March 1. I bet she would love to come and see it when she next visits Baldoyle from where she lives in Africa!
"May Mother Nature grant you always...
A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering Angel, so nothing can harm you,
Laughter to cheer you;
Faithful friends near you.
And whenever you pray, Heaven to hear you."
A local coffee shop stuck an ad for themselves on the cover of the Saturday papers they had in the cafe. Now that is clever. We can add on some information about our Biodiversity work on things we give out already. Perhaps on the First Class wordlists this week!
A team went to the Millenium Arboretum this morning to see how high a tree will grow in 28 years; these trees were all planted in 1988. I did not have the twenty five pounds to buy one at the time but my friend bought one for her new baby and now the trees are probably three times higher than him! They had a very good sign, perhaps the council might have a sign making department.
We found a tree with ribbons and soothers tied to it. Now what is that about? I looked it up. There is a story about a pacifier tree,
"Johnny does not want to give up his pacifier – ever! Mom is at wit's end.
But will Johnny's mind change when he learns about the magical Pacifier Tree?"
Maybe that would be a fun project for infants starting school, or people's young siblings.
12th Feb
A good time was had by all today, making one hundred Valentine cards in first class. We gave one to everybody working in the school....almost, we had to rush at the end of the day. It might be Monday before everybody finally gets them. We only wrote the poem today. In ouTREEch we gave one each to Room 7. We sent a trolley of Forest Flowers around the school with balloons. People could smell the flowers; tulips, primroses, an iris, snowdrops, hyacinths and crocuses. There was an orchid for fun.
We also have a new olive tree on loan. It was bought in Edel's flower-and-tree shop in Clontarf. It has olives and flowers on it and is growing really really fast. We had the idea to interview it. We are thinking of good questions to ask a tree, if it could talk. We think it would probably have a French accent and we have a volunteer to speak for the tree using their best accent.
So far the interview goes like this;
How do you like living in Ireland?
The Weather is Hawful, zere are grey clouds all the time and rain.
Do you have any friends?
My leaves of course!
What is inside you?
I don't know. What's inside you? (Olive shrugs her shoulders and makes a face)
At playtime we thought up some more;
Why do you have roots?
Why do squirrels like you?
Do you have any cousins?
Do you have a baby?
Do you have eyes?
How do you eat?
Can I make a treehouse in your branches?
If we come across any other non-native trees we will interview them too.
Then we will interview the trees in Forest Are! They will sound very local I suppose. They will probably prefer the weather and will like having lots of tree friends who live near them.
We can interview the grass! The bees! The bugs!
We will ask Fr. Robert what he thinks about trees. Fr. Paul talks to him sometimes, he might know.
Great news! At the staff meeting this week, all the teachers think our Good Idea is a Good Idea, to plant 00 square meters of forest in each of our two school campuses to celebrate 100 years since Ireland got its freedom! This is exciting because we will get it done just in time for Easter and the flag raising on March 15th!
11th Feb 2016
Forest Are quote of the week;
“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. "Albert Einstein.
What problems will we avoid if we all plant a little forest?
Today we looked at the teacher's showcase, Féilte, taking place in November. This would be a great place to broadcast the news about Forest Are.
We are looking at good advertisements.
We saw one from a cinema.
MIND-BLOWING
MASTERFUL
EXCEPTIONAL
INSPIRING
ELECTRIFYING
WOW.
Underneath each of these words it gives five or four stars, then in teeny writing the name of who said it.
This is what it says on the web;
'If you loved 'this film', here's another one about an ...' ★★★★ - Time Out
'Intelligent, insightful and very personal' ★★★★ - The Express
'Moving and well researched' ★★★★ - The Independent
'Masterful' ★★★★★ - Owen Gleiberman, BBC
★★★★ - The Sunday Times
'Exceptional' ★★★★ - MOJO
'Immensely likeable' ★★★★ - The Culture Whisper
'Electrifying' - The Wrap
'WOW' - IndieWire
'Terrific' ★★★★ - entertainment.ie
We could easily do ads like this about Forest Are.
Here are some ideas about getting involved in National Tree Week.
Today we got a lovely email saying somebody we know liked our idea. We got another one yesterday from someone we don't know. So we could take people's comments and ask them if we can use them to promote our forests. This is called a Testimonial. Let's all watch out for people we could ask who would give us a thumbs-up!
Found a classical group called Forestare in Canada so we will need to use 2 words for our Forest Are as they have used the one-word version. ,
They explain; The Latin word Forestare, meaning “to create forest”. Wow! I learned Latin in school but I had not realised that.
Here are the stats for Irish forests for our presentation from the Journal.ie.
We checked today whether some local scouts would be interested in joining our project and also a local school where we have a friend teaching.
We are making Valentine card verses tonight with birds and trees on our cards.
It is fun to make a card using emoticons of trees, they look funny in a square especially with some creatures thrown in. It might work in the logo, perhaps with each letter inside a tree all in a square.
As there is flu about, the team meeting is postponed until Wednesday. Get well soon everyone with flu!
Ah sure it'll be grand; those green posters would be great for St. Patrick's Day. We can add "Because Here Come the First Class Foresters".
Time for a silly break. Oh dear. The trees around the world are falling falling falling!http://ducksarethebest.com/ If you like ducks and don't mind flashing this is silly. What species will we find in our Forest Are do you think when it matures?
10th February 2016
Why not send an e-card on this site for the WWF Earth Hour coming on March 19th!
We have been checking out the cost of trees. It is not too bad! The cost is mostly in labour really and getting the piece of ground.
http://www.hedging.ie/native-trees.html is one firm selling native trees. Here is a price list for trees. Here is a grant scheme for 500 square meters, with 250 trees. So we would on that basis need a fifth of that which is 50 trees. Now this is all interesting, it is called a grove at this size, of 5 Ares. We have here an interesting set of instructions about growing the trees which is helpful. I wonder if we got 5 schools together would there be a grant to assist us?
GLAS 2015-16 ~ A Grove of Native Trees Updated: 8th February 2016
Objective:
To create pocket habitats for plants & animals, promoting our native biodiversity and enhancing the landscape
Requirements:
1) Plant a grove of trees in a single location on the farm
2) The grove must be at least 0.05hectares (250 trees) and not larger than 0.09 hectare (450 trees)
3) Trees to be planted in rows 2 metres apart with 1 metre between each tree within each row
4) Trees must be native species from native seed and the grove must include at least two different species.
5) The grove must be fenced to protect from livestock and kept clean of competing vegetation
Here is a marvellous project growing trees in schools in the developing world. Let's contact them.
Here is their sample certificate for people who contribute to their project. We could easily make a certificate like this. Especially when our logo is done!
Lots of places are putting up green lights for St. Patrick's Day. We can do the same to our ForestAre! It could be an ad! Our old one can easily be seen from the road. This might be a great place to advertise our project.
Called into the National History Museum today. Such a great refurbishment!
The kingfisher might look very well on our logo as our blue bird of Happiness!
Also saw a wonderful TREE OF KNOWLEDGE when researching images of old Irish trees, from a cross in Ardmore, County Waterford. It has a lovely apple tree, Adam and Eve. We don't need a snake because it is Irealnd. And Adam and Eve look to be quite warmly dressed, useful with all the wind we are experiencing. We don't want people to shiver looking at our logo.
I wonder is there copyright on such an old image? Or on the book of Kells? It is hard to find tree images from the book of Kells. We have lots of bird images from our old coins of course. What about fish and other animals? Then we could populate our logo with Irish creatures.
There is a great skeleton collection of Elks at the museum. We could do a really good interview about climate change with them, they could be deniers! Their land bridge was flooded with rising sea level already. This would be a useful story, some people who do not read the science sometimes say that things are fine and they need some persuasion.
Also there are some great fossils from Howth from when we were living in the Tropics. Yes! Ireland! It is hard to believe, isn't it? Maybe that is why we love the sun.
We got this great and encouraging email today from WeForest! What do you think?
Dear Orla,
Thanks for your message. What a fantastic initiative, to create Forest Ares at schools. I remember from my school days (long time ago) we had a school garden, which I enjoyed very much. Imagine the impact on children when given the opportunity to grow a real forest at their school!
Matching the Irish Forest Ares with Ares in the tropics is certainly possible. And also very educational, because the impact of the trees on the local community might be even bigger in the tropics than in Ireland: jobs for women with which they earn an income for their families, improved soil and water cycle resulting in higher yields for farmers, and forest related products like fruit, honey, herbs and nuts.
Our planting projects are a bit too large to only focus on school grounds, we plant them where they are needed most and have the highest ecological and socioeconomic impact.
For example, our project in India restores degraded forests, the natural environment for local tribes who depend on the forests for their livelihood (you can compare it with the Amazon rainforest and Amerindian tribes) Restoring these ancient woods is very important for the indigenous people. And to restore a hectare would only need 1000 trees.
Maybe more interesting for you is our project in Tanzania where we will plant 1.5 million trees in the coming years, amongst which almost 400,000 fruit trees on the land of local farmers. Perhaps an idea to plant x fruit trees for every Irish Forest Are and support Tanzanian families?
Let me know if you like these ideas. We can always brainstorm a bit more.
All the best,
Jeannette
--
Jeannette Van Bodegraven
Benelux Director of Partnerships
We looked up these forest proverbs from all over the world. Which are your favourites? Ours are 28,29,40,44,59,70,77,78,81, 87 and 88. We have been looking up words that sound like tree, ever since WeForest put us in touch with Symmetree. Another school, in the U.S., is helping plant trees in the developing world. We are in touch and hope to help!
We are onsTREEm! Let us TREEt Planet earth, you, your home, your sTREEt, Let's have a winning sTREEk, Put in your EnTREE, you might win a ReTREEt, sit by the sTREEm, TREEcle, We are doing ouTREEch, We are looking for a sTREEm of income, Don't ill-TREEt your planet. We sent this message to the One Good Idea page on Twitter;
Hi there, checking in to say hi and say how much we are enjoying getting ready for the deadline next month, hooking up all over the world with Plant-a-Tree professionals!
Coillte plant 20,000 trees an hour! Wow! That is extraordinary! I bet we could get a few from them for our schools if we asked nicely. If our project gets through to the next round they might say yes!
Resources found; Coillte have some great workbooks for all classes and some good videos about forestry Some of us watched BBCs "Secret History of the British Garden". Monty Don was looking at a garden planned in the 1690s, of which was said by the current owners,
"The Wilderness would have been laid out very formally." , when looking at the ancient plans. So wildernesses have a long history in landscaping! Another idea they had in the 1600s was building a maze through long plants. It would be great fun to do this through the long grass. We can ask Pat.
Ireland will be the only country in the world to have a biosphere covering parts of a major city area. Films to make; we have a great one ready of the Electric car being blessed. Teacher did not want the holy water too near the electrics! This is a good film to encourage reducing emissions.
We are thinking more about logos. Today we looked at the AIB logo. It has an ark taken from the Book of Kells. We find that motifs from this book have been used for lots of Irish art; all our coins had birds before the Euro cent came in, we had stamps at Christmas and other times of the year taken from the book. There is currently a colouring book in print called the Tree of Life which was a really popular pattern in olden times. An image like this would suit us. We would like to see the Tree of Life image in the book of Kells but we can't find it at present, we may check out the colouring book and see has it inspiration for us. We do like Lego but we love Irish things. You will love the magnicent art in the video, "Why is Biodiversity So Important", with a lovely globe backdrop that would suit a presentation.
Drama; This would be a lovely backdrop for our puppet show; the Forest Song.
And here is an even nicer one, of a bluebell wood with birdsong, suitable for a classroom bit of background music for say a handwriting session in school.
This one is lovely; it could alternate with the other; Nightingale song.
How fantastic is this video, everybody? The global goals. Of course, trees are one of them. Must find out more.
Here is more about them. What we take out of the land we put back in; forestry. Cities are to be sustainable. We can help with our project!
We can take action by taking the Global Goals Selfie and putting it on our website.
17 goals is a lot of goals. Imagine that so many countries were able to agree on that many goals. Well done world! But how will we make progress on so many goals? One bite at a time perhaps. A good idea is to mark off what we do on a calendar and make a chain we don't want to break, say of x s. In getting our message out we don't want to interrupt classes. This week we asked Roising in the office to help us by broadcasting on the Intercom. We called it Radio Roisin.
We will be commemorating 100 years of freedom next month. What could be better than by planting 100 square meters of forest in each of our two buildings. We could get the message out to other schools then and at the end of the year we might have a hectare of forest, 100 ares if we get it all lined up for November next which is the major planting season. We would need strong people to help with the digging.
We got some inspiration from this site, We will ask the teachers what they think!
The Irish Times.In the video it is explained that schools have been invited to write our own proclamation, like the 7 artist signatories of the proclamation, looking for an alternative way in Ireland, tying in Poetry, Drama, Singing, Dancing, Sport and Literacy. We could do that!
Our Forest Poem - 2nd class
Our Green Code Song - whole school etc.
National Tree week is on the week before. They have so many ideas for events. We can check if we can do one to tie in with our new forest planting.
What about our soil, what is it like?
Teachers last year all over Ireland took part in a programme where they made 3 tiny changes, 6 days a week for five weeks. For our campaigns of the month we could do that and tie in the Global goals. This might make it all manageable. We were discussing a hand sign, we thought it might be fun, that would look like a tiny forest, we could use it in our picture. Here is a great one! Tree in baby sign language! Here is the sign for tree and also for forest in American sign language. Hmm, it seems there are a few different versions! We could ask our teacher for the deaf, who was in school last Friday.
We looked up some Ogham symbols.
Ok the survey above is not getting a great response.
We are looking at the PDF for writing a survey and filling it out.
Carrying out a survey Decide what it is you wish to find out by doing this survey. Purpose of survey: We want to know if people would buy a tree to help fund our tree project.. How much would they pay? When would they buy one?
Sample answers; for a baby present, mothers are spending say ten euro for someone they don't know very well, like a neighbour of their mother's, or between ten and fifteen if it is someone closer, like say a neighbour's grand daughter. _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ Decide on the questions you want to ask. 1. _______Tick an occasion when you have bought flowers or plants in the last year?
How often do you buy flowers or plants? How much do you typically pay when buying flowers or plants?
How much do you typically pay for a child's gift in your family?
an adult's gift?
Would you consider giving a gift certificate of a tree planted in an educational school native forest planted for biodiversity on the island of Ireland? __________________________________________________________________________ 2. ___Trees in Ireland grow slower than in Scandinavia at the same rate as in Scandinavia faster than in Scandinavia?
How much are trees to buy online? In Ireland, 20 euro - 55, in the Tropics, one euro or one dollar.
______________________________________________________________________________ 3. _________________________________________________________________________________ 4. _________________________________________________________________________________ 5. _________________________________________________________________________________ 6. _________________________________________________________________________________ 7. _________________________________________________________________________________ Use ‘closed’ questions that require a yes/no answer, e.g. Do you know what non-renewable energy sources are? You could ask questions that give a choice of answers that are ticked, e.g. Which of these are renewable sources of energy? (a) Coal (b) oil (c) wind Don’t ask ‘open’ questions where a person could give a variety of information in their answer e.g. why do you think that most of Ireland’s energy is produced from
Your child has been shortlisted to represent the school at the Green Schools Expo in the RDS Industries' Hall on Thursday, 25th February. Please let your child's teacher know if your child is unavailable on that day as there are only 48 places from the whole school and we can allocate the place to another child.
The coach will be leaving at 9.00 a.m. from the Junior school and stopping to pick up the remaining Green School Committee members at the Senior school so punctuality is important as we need to get there early.. It promises to be a great day out and will be attended by 5,000 youngsters from all over Ireland as well as some visiting other VIPs. We will return before the usual dismissal time. Please remind your child that they are expected to behave in public like young ladies and gentlemen in public, to stay with their group and obey all the teachers' instructions.
More information is available about the event on our school Green Pages, at
http://room5stlaurence.weebly.com/green-schools.html
where you can also read about our Forest project which has come in the top twenty in the whole country and Operation Birdsong Nation's competition to build a bird feeder or bird house for school this month from waste materials. Please fill out our survey on our blog page if you can.
Kind regards,
Orla Farrell, Joanna Coughlan, Claire Finnerty and Marian O Grady,
Green Schools Co-ordinators.
We were watching the Ireland-Wales match today and an ad came up about not discriminating.
Perhaps we could do a fun ad about planting every single kind of tree, tall, short....
We got in touch with a parent with expertise in this area to find out the school's Carbon Count. I wonder how many trees we would need to plant to offset our school's emissions?
We in Baldoyle because of our estuary and our proximity to Howth are one of only 600 plus biospheres in the world!
Dublin Bay has been designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. This was reported in the press in June, 2015.
Here is an RTE news clip explaining how special we are!
Global warming for kids;
Here is an explanation from NASA. Also a short animation on why it is useful to plant trees to avert further warming and other solutions. The following video explains the Greenhouse effect.
Here is a link to the Panasonic Tree project. Read about our National Biodiversity Plans here. You can download a copy of the plans.
The minister commented at the launch of the current plan,
" It is particularly important to raise that awareness with children, as they will bring that with them throughout their lives and help pass on the key messages. In my former career as a teacher, it gave me great pleasure to organise events such as nature walks, in order to open children’s eyes to our natural environment and its importance."
You can find out about the Fingal local plan here.
We have joined the national Grow It Yourself organisation, GIY. Here is their latest newsletter with lots of gardening tips;
Hey, we have been invited to be on a radio show in two weeks by our new Forest Friends, on Near FM. Wow, we had better get practicing our new poem!
Check out our poster!
Albert Einstein; "If you don't explain it simply enough, you don't understand it well"FAQs about growing your own WILDareNESS
Pause for a song break people, an Irish schoolgirl brings us one of Ireland's many glorious moments.
Snowdrops and daffodils,
Butterflies and Bees...
we are the proud owners of an ORCHARD everybody. We will be finishing it on Friday March 11th, there are 3 trees left to plant.
Is there a lot of maintenance? Apart from watering the trees in the unlikely event of them drying out over the first two or three years, zero maintenance. A wilderness is, as it says in the name, wild.
How long does it take to do?; ah, well, you can plant a tree in two minutes if you are quick digging the hole. If you had lots of spades everyone could start on the whistle and your forest would be planted in that time. But why hurry? Make it a planting party. Do like us and have some elderflower cordial and enjoy the moment. A perfect wilderness would be remote, solitary, vast....but since nothing is perfect in the Universe, according to Stephen Hawking, you will need your imagination to fill in what's missing, "Wilderness is the preservation of the world,"
Wilderness may need to be in your state of mind, our brains are very complex, I bet we will manage!
Time for another songbreak, featuring Napoleon. Do you know that he is the man who planted vast oak forests in France, provision for future warships. When they started making them from steel, they used the oak to make wine barrels instead. France has brilliant forest cover, thanks Napoleon, that is one good thing he did anyway.
A quote from one of my very favourite books, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" on this, World Book Day, about another wilderness, popular apparently back in the 1800s in these islands!
"Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take some refreshment; but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not very politely, declined eating anything; and then rising up, said to Elizabeth --
"Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favour me with your company."
"Go, my dear," cried her mother, "and shew her ladyship about the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage."
Elizabeth obeyed, and, running into her own room for her parasol, attended her noble guest downstairs. As they passed through the hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors into the dining-parlour and drawing-room, and pronouncing them, after a short survey, to be decent looking rooms, walked on.
Her carriage remained at the door, and Elizabeth saw that her waiting-woman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk that led to the copse;"
We had better remember to bring our parasols when we go out to walk our lands! It is good to know that walking around a wilderness has been popular these long years! Open Call to Teachers 2016FÉILTE open call for submissionsMany thanks for you submission for FÉILTE 2016. The closing date for submissions is 5pm on Friday, 4 March 2016. We will be in touch soon after with news on your submission.
Today we are putting in a submission for Joanna Coughlan and Orla Farrell to take part in Féilte, the teachers' showcase next Autumn to tell teachers all over Ireland about the school's tree-planting initiative. We enjoyed the RDS so much last week we want to go back on a Saturday.
Here is our entry. Wish us luck!
The WILDareNESS Project; Every Schoolchild Plants Twin Trees by 2020
Description of work proposed for showcasing
We answered the call of countless world leaders to act to achieve the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. With UN-sponsored, children-led “Plant for the Planet” whose target is to plant 1m trees in every country, we joined 100,000 children in planting almost 15m trees worldwide. We planted two tiny forests of 100 square metres and start our third, an orchard in our local park. We sponsored equivalent planting in Tanzania, South Sudan and Brazil. We partner with several local and national organisations. Our goal - every schoolchild in Ireland plants a tree by 2020, sponsoring another in the developing world.
How will this project celebrate and showcase innovation in teaching and learning at FÉILTE? 50 words
"To do is to understand". We had a planting party, it’s easy to do. All we needed was a little piece of ground to use and some saplings. It’s fast; we planted our forest in an hour. It’s cheap, we got the trees from sponsors. We will show you how.
What would teachers and members of the public learn from this showcase at FÉILTE? 50 words
The Problem; These islands -11% tree cover- currently win the wooden spoon in Europe
Our Brilliant Solution: Taking tiny steps worked for us - inspired by INTO programme "Wellness 365"! Afforesting to tackle climate change is especially effective in Ireland; trees grow seven times faster than elsewhere in the EU.
We had to boil down our blog, now as big as a book to 200 words! It was a very good exercise. And a great opportunity to think very hard about what we are doing and what we want to achieve. Below are some of the questions we are thinking about and answering as we gather information.
We have been checking statistics....there are over a million children in Ireland!
Minister Fitzgerald stated: “this is an immensely valuable national resource offering unprecedented potential for Ireland’s future.".
So if every child in Ireland planted a tree we would exceed the target of "Plant for the Planet" nicely!
We talked about poorer children in Ireland and how they may need extra help organising tree planting, especially travellers. We will contact the traveller organisation and see what they suggest.
Check out OWLS. the Dublin Childrens' Nature organisation.
We learned about the 2 minute beach clean at EXPO. Find out about it and watch a two minute film from the BBC news here! We thought, hey, what a great idea! That is EXACTLY what we always do when we go to the park! So we thought, let's start a worldwide campaign! Oh wait a minute, we have a Forest campaign going already. ok well.....But it is the same thing. "The Beach Is a Great Place to Start" says their founder. So we will join them and add on another one of our tiny but brilliant ideas!
Best of all, you get to make ART with your litter before you throw it away! Read the safety page first, all brought to us by An Taisce Here.
We are hoping to help out with the Baldoyle Racecourse Allotment expansion; they want to encourage bees....Here is an interesting tip for not being stressed from the One Good Tip campaign currently on the bus shelters by the Health and Safety Authority,
"When I want to feel well I go out into our back garden and talk to the bees. Bees have always been part of my family. When I was growing up, they were there, humming among the apple trees in the orchard. My father let them know as each of his children was born. If anyone went far away or came home from far away, they bees had to be informed. It was all part of a belief among beekeepers that the bees must be told about their human family’s life events or else they will take offence and fly away.
So the bees knew when I got married. I have my own beehive now, ruled by a queen from one of my father’s hives. My wife loves that we have our own raw honey and lectures me on its health benefits.
I tell her how therapeutic it is talk to the bees. Whenever I feel stressed I take my worries out to the beehive.
The bees are busy, of course, but I know that some level they hear me. Any day now there will be a new arrival into our house and the bees will be the first to know."
Now there is an idea for us all; when we are a bit snowed under with work in the classroom, let's go out and tell the bees in the WILDareNESS, we can expect them soon now that all our new wild flowers are planted!
Another of their tips is CYCLING!
Parents; are you aware of the bike-to-work scheme? You may enjoy cycling with your child to school!
We had a new one of these in the staff room yesterday. You can get half of the cost of your bike back in returned tax! Thank you, Irish taxpayers!
Cutting carbon tips; for all those heading out on their bikes to school, this week the RSA sent me these great suggestions for safety. We are continuing our efforts to cut carbon with several initiatives coming up;
Scoot on Wednesday on next week,
Cycle on Wednesday drive coming up in May.
Walk on Wednesday drive coming up in June. We will all be very fit after all that!
Check out Irish Aid and the great animation explaining the Global Goals for 2030 here.
The text of the Global goals is to be found in full here on the UN website. They are heartening to read, bold and ambitious and since we are writing our new Proclamation for a new century this week we need search no further! All the thinking has been done for us! It needs only to be written in green, white and orange!
We are working on these goals specifically in our project;
Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
13.1 Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries
13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning
13.3 Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning
13.a Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible
13.b Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities
* Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.
Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
15.1 By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains and drylands, in line with obligations under international agreements
15.2 By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally
15.3 By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world
15.5 Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species 15.9 By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts
15.a Mobilize and significantly increase financial resources from all sources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems
15.b Mobilize significant resources from all sources and at all levels to finance sustainable forest management and provide adequate incentives to developing countries to advance such management, including for conservation and reforestation
March 1 2016; Congrats to all involved in today's great tree-planting endeavour and especially to our old friend Dale Treadwell. What a joy to have our very own orchard with apple, pear, cherry and plum trees! We planted them to mark the birth of some special babies to the school staff this year, new children and grandchildren Masie, Finn, Michael and Evelyn who has just started school this year in Africa, daughter of past pupil Fiona.
We were on RTE News! Oh wow. We featured on the News 2day programme last Thursday. Check us out on RTE player here.
We have so much to learn, getting ready for our presentation. We were learning off our new poem today. Our trick was, adding actions to make it fun and easier!
Feel like colouring with all this rain? You can print off some tricky colouring pages here or if you want a little less mindfulness easier ones here .
Thanks to Margaret for sending us in these videos about forest gardens for bees from Monty Don on the BBC. One is almost an hour long, warning you!
So February is over; now to plan bee. I spoke to Louise tonight of the Baldoyle Racecourse gardenres' group who have helped us so much in the past. We are discussing planting expeditions, shelter belts for the raised beds and planting of low native plants to encourage bee visits.
Forest Friends ; are doing some interesting work with local schools such as Santa Sabena; for example you can learn everything you every wanted to know about the Alder and more!
New; Follow wildAREness on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/orlamaryfarrell/! Lots of green ideas, handy for St. Patrick's Day!
Ireland's second wilderness project launched | News | That is us! I am just playing with the headline there from our wilderness in Mayo, one of the most exciting in Europe!
Ours is a nano-wilderness I guess!
Learning about mitigation.
Minister Kelly stated: “Mitigation effort is a global responsibility ...however it is important that developed countries such as Ireland provide leadership in terms of their contribution and the framework underpinned by this Bill will enable such a response to be developed well into the future”. - See more
The WildAREness Project; growing tiny forests
–The European Union–The entire planet–The Island of Ireland–Total––
A third of the land is covered with trees50.00%
10.00%
050.00%
1
2
–
A quarter of the land is covered with trees50.00%
150.00%
10.00%
0
2
–
A tenth of the land is covered with trees0.00%
033.33%
166.67%
2
3
Greenhouse Gases; what you need to know, kids!
Parents may be interested in the other WildAREness project happening in Ireland, an article from the Independent here.
23rd Feb
Try our crossword here!
And here are the answers!http://www.puzzle-maker.com/crossword_FreeSolution.cgi
Táimíd ar an liosta Seachtain na Gaeilge!"; Imeachtai
11/03/2016
11:00 am - 1:00 pmTabhair cuairt ar ÁR nGarrán Fiáin
St Laurences NS
St. Laurence N.S, Co. Átha Cliath
Now we are on Twitter! Check out @WildAREness!
Check out global Forest Watch!
22nd Feb
Rewilding Europe...Ireland is the first project of its kind!
21st Feb
Time at the weekend? Follow the trail of Native Trees in St. Anne's Park. If you want to download this leaflet first you can ring back the bark rubbings, or just put them on pages you label, I will give people in my class a night off written work!
Mark of the GAA told us about the huge festival to be on in Racecourse park!
We are going to find out more about it!
Dale has been in touch with options for the WildAREness area. Thanks Dale!
19th Feb
Do you know our forest event will be part of Seachtain na Gaeilge! Get cracking on the green items search now!
I
Exciting news! The National Tree Council is advertising our event today! Wow! Time to dig out the green clothes folks - remember;
Borrow or DIY
Do Not buy!
I am off to buy fruit trees now!
Growing things, an article about the very young from CBeebees (BBC) may interest parents.
A note of explanation; this "blog" is our Campaign Diary, unedited. We have too much writing, too many films etc. nobody would want to read it all, but we need to keep a record of what we are doing in our "journey" to enter the next stage of the One Good Idea project. It is a bit of fun. I am putting together everybody's ideas from everywhere about our Good, in fact Great, Idea. I saw this article about good habits, thinking of our Walk to School days. How about WOT; Walk on Tuesdays? WOT...walk ANOTHER day?
Think about this;
"It takes me 40 minutes to walk to work, and 25 minutes to get there on public transport. That’s an hour and 20 minutes of walking, but only 30 minutes out of my day. How’s that for time management....?"
I like this idea. It takes me an hour to cycle in and out to work and about 40 minutes in the car. So that is an hour of exercise and only 20 minutes out of my day. (Of course the good thing about cycling is that you don't get stressed out held up in traffic like I did last Friday when 3 cars tipped one another on the coast road and halted the traffic for 25 minutes!).
Over the half term perhaps some parents might think of enjoying the birds and trees in St. Anne's and other nearby parks at Parkrun?
It would all have been more fun if I had started planting trees at age 4 like we are in St. Laurence School maybe, but schools were different long ago! Everyone was still doing their best though. There were a lot fewer people on the planet when I was 4 so we have to think a little harder now about how we organize things. So let's get thinking and send me your ideas on the questionnaire above.
PS If you come across anything too silly here, let us know, something odd might have slipped in as we are adding to this all the time and we might be rushing. And children, if you find anything scary as you look for ideas, just x out of it and let us know, sometimes you might come across an odd strange thing, as Albert Einstein, that great cyclist said, the clever person ignores!
It's mid-term!
And - 3 degrees last night. I have not the cash to buy birdseed just now with all the tree-shopping. I feel guilty about throwing out the heels, I sometimes make them into garlic butter croutons. But this morning with that hard frost I saved a biscuit tray from the green bin collection and have it on my patio table for the birds.
No takers yet, I am a bit late I guess at 8.30 a.m. what with the birds having been awake since 4, I hope they eat them for their supper because by then the crusts will be going into the brown bin. Must not attract that R-A-T back. Not wanting to put anybody off. Wasn't it so interesting to hear from Brenda that the birds only have meals morning and evening? It makes it easier to be the caterers when we know this.
We met with a member of the Baldoyle Racecourse Community Gardeners today and we sent them this message; their allotments are so beautiful, there beside the cows (not foxes, just faraway cows in foxy colours....), the gorse and the sea. Well done local gardeners. They suggested that when we come on our visit we bring our seeds and use one of the community raised beds perhaps....need we be asked twice? Twenty eight lollipop trees on the way...Dale tells me tonight that Lidl and Aldi have fruit trees on sale this week for 5 euro!
Hi Community Gardeners!
Two of us teachers from the St. Laurence National School cycled over to see your fantastic facility today. It is just beautiful! We were so grateful for our award last year by the way! We are working hard on our school gardens and have started on a new project, Forest Are, 100 square metres of tiny forest in each of both the Junior and Senior school buildings, with staunch support from Marjorie. We are planting equivalent trees in the developing world. We are interested in starting a similar project nearby, perhaps when you are expanding there might be a corner there for our young trees to give you all a little shelter from the sea breezes?
February 17th, 2016
Today we signed up to host an event for NATIONAL TREE WEEK.
We are in the top twenty primary schools in Ireland in SEAI's current "One Good Idea" competition for our idea, "Forest Are"; we are growing a tiny 100 meter squared forest of native trees to encourage biodiversity.
Our tiny foresters will hold a ceremonial tree planting on the day, sing some green songs, recite a forest poem all dressed in green and with a strong Irish language element to mark Seachtain na Gaeilge.
Our aim is to encourage others to copy us; we have planted 2 Forest Ares so far and are planning our third. Through our project SYMMETREE IRELAND for every tree we plant here we plant another fruit tree in South Sudan or Tanzania through our partnerships.
It will be at 11 on March 11th! More fun for us all!
We have signed up for the NASA newsletter. Its website has startling pictures and advice on mitigating the problem. You will love their story on the nine-year old boy who planted the seed to plant a trillion trees. He has challenged us to plant a million trees in Ireland. How many Forest Ares is that ? 20,000 it appears, golly. We may need to call in the scouts for sure.
(It sounds like a lot but phew, it is only 625 in each of 32 counties. Now that is very different!)
Here is an interesting quote from the Earthwatch website.
"EARTHWATCH URBAN ECOSYSTEMS PROGRAM We are in the Anthropocene epoch, characterized by human domination of the Earth’s ecosystems. Today 54 percent of the people in the world live in urban areas, with a projected growth of 1.8 percent annually. Sustainability of urban communities and urban ecosystems in a world experiencing rapid change and unprecedented environmental degradation represents one of the biggest challenges we face."
We notice that AIB is sponsoring our competition. Maybe they could find the person who designed their logo back in I think 1972 when my father was a manager in their Dundrum branch and ask them for some book-of-Kells images for us. The Ark! Do you think they knew about global warming back then?
What a wonderful world!
15th February 2016
Exciting news! (What, MORE?). We are launching a National Tree Week event tomorrow! Watch this space!
Their website has super resources and films, our favourite one being,
How to Plant a Tree.
A big help to us and our film making! Adult and young adult readers may enjoy the story of the Man who Planted Trees, mentioned on the site.
They have an interesting tree sponsorship programme, but 50 euro is expensive and it is only available in County Cavan.
This site charges a minimum of 20 euro with no certificate.
We are so lucky today to have a workshop with Brenda Palmer, the Ecological Gardener, in Room 5 and 8
She taught us some interesting facts about birds. They can see predators behind them with their super eyesight!
.
She is doing a fantastic workshop with us about birds and trees.
The BEST news for us is that they like LEFTOVERS to eat. What a great idea!
We are going to collect bits and pieces for our bird feeders.
14th February 2016
Today is Valentine's Day, the day we launch our very own OuTREEch programme, SymeTREE Ireland, Is Féidir Linn Bheith Siméadrach (Yes We Can Do SymmeTREE). That name is a bit long, we will have to work on that.
I needed a few presents so what better than trees in the developing world, to match the ones we are growing in Ireland.
One donation for 20 trees was made today to Plant for the Planet in the name of my friend's new baby Oscar who was born on Friday!
Trees planted11.680.439Thank you for your Donation
Dear friend of Plant-for-the-Planet,
Thank you for supporting the children of Plant-for-the-Planet!
We are very happy about your donation! Your transaction number is SPEG 0008-7933-7.
Check out this U.N. tree counter! http://www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/treecounter
We are getting ready to do our presentation; How to Wake up your Mouth...on How to speak so that people want to Listen by Julian Treasure, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIho2S0ZahI
One donation was made to South Sudan, details to follow in due course. This is a tiny project being carried out by a young NGO worker who flies over there today. I made this donation in memory of my youngest brother, John Paul, who went missing in America when he was 24. It is a good thing to remember people who are no longer with us with trees, Anita Foley plants a tree every year in memory of her father.
And finally we make a further donation to WeForest in the name of Forest Are. I made this in the name of my niece Colette whose birthday it was on Monday. She is training in Trinity College to be a nurse, I think she will like this present better than flowers, she sees a lot of flowers in hospitals and she has so much to do caring for people that I think it would make her tired if she had to also mind a bunch of flowers, having to change the water which they say does get filled with bacteria quite easily.
14-Feb-2016 12:59:38 GMT
Hello Orla Farrell,
This email confirms that you have donated $20.00 USD to WeForest ([email protected]) using PayPal.
While I am donating, I will donate the price of 3 trees to my great-niece Evelyn to be planted in school. Her mother went to our school, so did her aunts and her grandmother was on the Board of Management for years and years so I think Evelyn would love to know there are trees growing here with her name on them. I will ask Dale about the cost of trees and we will put them in the Forest Are on March 1. I bet she would love to come and see it when she next visits Baldoyle from where she lives in Africa!
"May Mother Nature grant you always...
A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering Angel, so nothing can harm you,
Laughter to cheer you;
Faithful friends near you.
And whenever you pray, Heaven to hear you."
A local coffee shop stuck an ad for themselves on the cover of the Saturday papers they had in the cafe. Now that is clever. We can add on some information about our Biodiversity work on things we give out already. Perhaps on the First Class wordlists this week!
A team went to the Millenium Arboretum this morning to see how high a tree will grow in 28 years; these trees were all planted in 1988. I did not have the twenty five pounds to buy one at the time but my friend bought one for her new baby and now the trees are probably three times higher than him! They had a very good sign, perhaps the council might have a sign making department.
We found a tree with ribbons and soothers tied to it. Now what is that about? I looked it up. There is a story about a pacifier tree,
"Johnny does not want to give up his pacifier – ever! Mom is at wit's end.
But will Johnny's mind change when he learns about the magical Pacifier Tree?"
Maybe that would be a fun project for infants starting school, or people's young siblings.
12th Feb
A good time was had by all today, making one hundred Valentine cards in first class. We gave one to everybody working in the school....almost, we had to rush at the end of the day. It might be Monday before everybody finally gets them. We only wrote the poem today. In ouTREEch we gave one each to Room 7. We sent a trolley of Forest Flowers around the school with balloons. People could smell the flowers; tulips, primroses, an iris, snowdrops, hyacinths and crocuses. There was an orchid for fun.
We also have a new olive tree on loan. It was bought in Edel's flower-and-tree shop in Clontarf. It has olives and flowers on it and is growing really really fast. We had the idea to interview it. We are thinking of good questions to ask a tree, if it could talk. We think it would probably have a French accent and we have a volunteer to speak for the tree using their best accent.
So far the interview goes like this;
How do you like living in Ireland?
The Weather is Hawful, zere are grey clouds all the time and rain.
Do you have any friends?
My leaves of course!
What is inside you?
I don't know. What's inside you? (Olive shrugs her shoulders and makes a face)
At playtime we thought up some more;
Why do you have roots?
Why do squirrels like you?
Do you have any cousins?
Do you have a baby?
Do you have eyes?
How do you eat?
Can I make a treehouse in your branches?
If we come across any other non-native trees we will interview them too.
Then we will interview the trees in Forest Are! They will sound very local I suppose. They will probably prefer the weather and will like having lots of tree friends who live near them.
We can interview the grass! The bees! The bugs!
We will ask Fr. Robert what he thinks about trees. Fr. Paul talks to him sometimes, he might know.
Great news! At the staff meeting this week, all the teachers think our Good Idea is a Good Idea, to plant 00 square meters of forest in each of our two school campuses to celebrate 100 years since Ireland got its freedom! This is exciting because we will get it done just in time for Easter and the flag raising on March 15th!
11th Feb 2016
Forest Are quote of the week;
“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. "Albert Einstein.
What problems will we avoid if we all plant a little forest?
Today we looked at the teacher's showcase, Féilte, taking place in November. This would be a great place to broadcast the news about Forest Are.
We are looking at good advertisements.
We saw one from a cinema.
MIND-BLOWING
MASTERFUL
EXCEPTIONAL
INSPIRING
ELECTRIFYING
WOW.
Underneath each of these words it gives five or four stars, then in teeny writing the name of who said it.
This is what it says on the web;
'If you loved 'this film', here's another one about an ...' ★★★★ - Time Out
'Intelligent, insightful and very personal' ★★★★ - The Express
'Moving and well researched' ★★★★ - The Independent
'Masterful' ★★★★★ - Owen Gleiberman, BBC
★★★★ - The Sunday Times
'Exceptional' ★★★★ - MOJO
'Immensely likeable' ★★★★ - The Culture Whisper
'Electrifying' - The Wrap
'WOW' - IndieWire
'Terrific' ★★★★ - entertainment.ie
We could easily do ads like this about Forest Are.
Here are some ideas about getting involved in National Tree Week.
Today we got a lovely email saying somebody we know liked our idea. We got another one yesterday from someone we don't know. So we could take people's comments and ask them if we can use them to promote our forests. This is called a Testimonial. Let's all watch out for people we could ask who would give us a thumbs-up!
Found a classical group called Forestare in Canada so we will need to use 2 words for our Forest Are as they have used the one-word version. ,
They explain; The Latin word Forestare, meaning “to create forest”. Wow! I learned Latin in school but I had not realised that.
Here are the stats for Irish forests for our presentation from the Journal.ie.
We checked today whether some local scouts would be interested in joining our project and also a local school where we have a friend teaching.
We are making Valentine card verses tonight with birds and trees on our cards.
It is fun to make a card using emoticons of trees, they look funny in a square especially with some creatures thrown in. It might work in the logo, perhaps with each letter inside a tree all in a square.
As there is flu about, the team meeting is postponed until Wednesday. Get well soon everyone with flu!
Ah sure it'll be grand; those green posters would be great for St. Patrick's Day. We can add "Because Here Come the First Class Foresters".
Time for a silly break. Oh dear. The trees around the world are falling falling falling!http://ducksarethebest.com/ If you like ducks and don't mind flashing this is silly. What species will we find in our Forest Are do you think when it matures?
10th February 2016
Why not send an e-card on this site for the WWF Earth Hour coming on March 19th!
We have been checking out the cost of trees. It is not too bad! The cost is mostly in labour really and getting the piece of ground.
http://www.hedging.ie/native-trees.html is one firm selling native trees. Here is a price list for trees. Here is a grant scheme for 500 square meters, with 250 trees. So we would on that basis need a fifth of that which is 50 trees. Now this is all interesting, it is called a grove at this size, of 5 Ares. We have here an interesting set of instructions about growing the trees which is helpful. I wonder if we got 5 schools together would there be a grant to assist us?
GLAS 2015-16 ~ A Grove of Native Trees Updated: 8th February 2016
Objective:
To create pocket habitats for plants & animals, promoting our native biodiversity and enhancing the landscape
Requirements:
1) Plant a grove of trees in a single location on the farm
2) The grove must be at least 0.05hectares (250 trees) and not larger than 0.09 hectare (450 trees)
3) Trees to be planted in rows 2 metres apart with 1 metre between each tree within each row
4) Trees must be native species from native seed and the grove must include at least two different species.
5) The grove must be fenced to protect from livestock and kept clean of competing vegetation
Here is a marvellous project growing trees in schools in the developing world. Let's contact them.
Here is their sample certificate for people who contribute to their project. We could easily make a certificate like this. Especially when our logo is done!
Lots of places are putting up green lights for St. Patrick's Day. We can do the same to our ForestAre! It could be an ad! Our old one can easily be seen from the road. This might be a great place to advertise our project.
Called into the National History Museum today. Such a great refurbishment!
The kingfisher might look very well on our logo as our blue bird of Happiness!
Also saw a wonderful TREE OF KNOWLEDGE when researching images of old Irish trees, from a cross in Ardmore, County Waterford. It has a lovely apple tree, Adam and Eve. We don't need a snake because it is Irealnd. And Adam and Eve look to be quite warmly dressed, useful with all the wind we are experiencing. We don't want people to shiver looking at our logo.
I wonder is there copyright on such an old image? Or on the book of Kells? It is hard to find tree images from the book of Kells. We have lots of bird images from our old coins of course. What about fish and other animals? Then we could populate our logo with Irish creatures.
There is a great skeleton collection of Elks at the museum. We could do a really good interview about climate change with them, they could be deniers! Their land bridge was flooded with rising sea level already. This would be a useful story, some people who do not read the science sometimes say that things are fine and they need some persuasion.
Also there are some great fossils from Howth from when we were living in the Tropics. Yes! Ireland! It is hard to believe, isn't it? Maybe that is why we love the sun.
We got this great and encouraging email today from WeForest! What do you think?
Dear Orla,
Thanks for your message. What a fantastic initiative, to create Forest Ares at schools. I remember from my school days (long time ago) we had a school garden, which I enjoyed very much. Imagine the impact on children when given the opportunity to grow a real forest at their school!
Matching the Irish Forest Ares with Ares in the tropics is certainly possible. And also very educational, because the impact of the trees on the local community might be even bigger in the tropics than in Ireland: jobs for women with which they earn an income for their families, improved soil and water cycle resulting in higher yields for farmers, and forest related products like fruit, honey, herbs and nuts.
Our planting projects are a bit too large to only focus on school grounds, we plant them where they are needed most and have the highest ecological and socioeconomic impact.
For example, our project in India restores degraded forests, the natural environment for local tribes who depend on the forests for their livelihood (you can compare it with the Amazon rainforest and Amerindian tribes) Restoring these ancient woods is very important for the indigenous people. And to restore a hectare would only need 1000 trees.
Maybe more interesting for you is our project in Tanzania where we will plant 1.5 million trees in the coming years, amongst which almost 400,000 fruit trees on the land of local farmers. Perhaps an idea to plant x fruit trees for every Irish Forest Are and support Tanzanian families?
Let me know if you like these ideas. We can always brainstorm a bit more.
All the best,
Jeannette
--
Jeannette Van Bodegraven
Benelux Director of Partnerships
We looked up these forest proverbs from all over the world. Which are your favourites? Ours are 28,29,40,44,59,70,77,78,81, 87 and 88. We have been looking up words that sound like tree, ever since WeForest put us in touch with Symmetree. Another school, in the U.S., is helping plant trees in the developing world. We are in touch and hope to help!
We are onsTREEm! Let us TREEt Planet earth, you, your home, your sTREEt, Let's have a winning sTREEk, Put in your EnTREE, you might win a ReTREEt, sit by the sTREEm, TREEcle, We are doing ouTREEch, We are looking for a sTREEm of income, Don't ill-TREEt your planet. We sent this message to the One Good Idea page on Twitter;
Hi there, checking in to say hi and say how much we are enjoying getting ready for the deadline next month, hooking up all over the world with Plant-a-Tree professionals!
Coillte plant 20,000 trees an hour! Wow! That is extraordinary! I bet we could get a few from them for our schools if we asked nicely. If our project gets through to the next round they might say yes!
Resources found; Coillte have some great workbooks for all classes and some good videos about forestry Some of us watched BBCs "Secret History of the British Garden". Monty Don was looking at a garden planned in the 1690s, of which was said by the current owners,
"The Wilderness would have been laid out very formally." , when looking at the ancient plans. So wildernesses have a long history in landscaping! Another idea they had in the 1600s was building a maze through long plants. It would be great fun to do this through the long grass. We can ask Pat.
Ireland will be the only country in the world to have a biosphere covering parts of a major city area. Films to make; we have a great one ready of the Electric car being blessed. Teacher did not want the holy water too near the electrics! This is a good film to encourage reducing emissions.
We are thinking more about logos. Today we looked at the AIB logo. It has an ark taken from the Book of Kells. We find that motifs from this book have been used for lots of Irish art; all our coins had birds before the Euro cent came in, we had stamps at Christmas and other times of the year taken from the book. There is currently a colouring book in print called the Tree of Life which was a really popular pattern in olden times. An image like this would suit us. We would like to see the Tree of Life image in the book of Kells but we can't find it at present, we may check out the colouring book and see has it inspiration for us. We do like Lego but we love Irish things. You will love the magnicent art in the video, "Why is Biodiversity So Important", with a lovely globe backdrop that would suit a presentation.
Drama; This would be a lovely backdrop for our puppet show; the Forest Song.
And here is an even nicer one, of a bluebell wood with birdsong, suitable for a classroom bit of background music for say a handwriting session in school.
This one is lovely; it could alternate with the other; Nightingale song.
How fantastic is this video, everybody? The global goals. Of course, trees are one of them. Must find out more.
Here is more about them. What we take out of the land we put back in; forestry. Cities are to be sustainable. We can help with our project!
We can take action by taking the Global Goals Selfie and putting it on our website.
17 goals is a lot of goals. Imagine that so many countries were able to agree on that many goals. Well done world! But how will we make progress on so many goals? One bite at a time perhaps. A good idea is to mark off what we do on a calendar and make a chain we don't want to break, say of x s. In getting our message out we don't want to interrupt classes. This week we asked Roising in the office to help us by broadcasting on the Intercom. We called it Radio Roisin.
We will be commemorating 100 years of freedom next month. What could be better than by planting 100 square meters of forest in each of our two buildings. We could get the message out to other schools then and at the end of the year we might have a hectare of forest, 100 ares if we get it all lined up for November next which is the major planting season. We would need strong people to help with the digging.
We got some inspiration from this site, We will ask the teachers what they think!
The Irish Times.In the video it is explained that schools have been invited to write our own proclamation, like the 7 artist signatories of the proclamation, looking for an alternative way in Ireland, tying in Poetry, Drama, Singing, Dancing, Sport and Literacy. We could do that!
Our Forest Poem - 2nd class
Our Green Code Song - whole school etc.
National Tree week is on the week before. They have so many ideas for events. We can check if we can do one to tie in with our new forest planting.
What about our soil, what is it like?
Teachers last year all over Ireland took part in a programme where they made 3 tiny changes, 6 days a week for five weeks. For our campaigns of the month we could do that and tie in the Global goals. This might make it all manageable. We were discussing a hand sign, we thought it might be fun, that would look like a tiny forest, we could use it in our picture. Here is a great one! Tree in baby sign language! Here is the sign for tree and also for forest in American sign language. Hmm, it seems there are a few different versions! We could ask our teacher for the deaf, who was in school last Friday.
We looked up some Ogham symbols.
Ok the survey above is not getting a great response.
We are looking at the PDF for writing a survey and filling it out.
Carrying out a survey Decide what it is you wish to find out by doing this survey. Purpose of survey: We want to know if people would buy a tree to help fund our tree project.. How much would they pay? When would they buy one?
Sample answers; for a baby present, mothers are spending say ten euro for someone they don't know very well, like a neighbour of their mother's, or between ten and fifteen if it is someone closer, like say a neighbour's grand daughter. _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ Decide on the questions you want to ask. 1. _______Tick an occasion when you have bought flowers or plants in the last year?
How often do you buy flowers or plants? How much do you typically pay when buying flowers or plants?
How much do you typically pay for a child's gift in your family?
an adult's gift?
Would you consider giving a gift certificate of a tree planted in an educational school native forest planted for biodiversity on the island of Ireland? __________________________________________________________________________ 2. ___Trees in Ireland grow slower than in Scandinavia at the same rate as in Scandinavia faster than in Scandinavia?
How much are trees to buy online? In Ireland, 20 euro - 55, in the Tropics, one euro or one dollar.
______________________________________________________________________________ 3. _________________________________________________________________________________ 4. _________________________________________________________________________________ 5. _________________________________________________________________________________ 6. _________________________________________________________________________________ 7. _________________________________________________________________________________ Use ‘closed’ questions that require a yes/no answer, e.g. Do you know what non-renewable energy sources are? You could ask questions that give a choice of answers that are ticked, e.g. Which of these are renewable sources of energy? (a) Coal (b) oil (c) wind Don’t ask ‘open’ questions where a person could give a variety of information in their answer e.g. why do you think that most of Ireland’s energy is produced from
Your child has been shortlisted to represent the school at the Green Schools Expo in the RDS Industries' Hall on Thursday, 25th February. Please let your child's teacher know if your child is unavailable on that day as there are only 48 places from the whole school and we can allocate the place to another child.
The coach will be leaving at 9.00 a.m. from the Junior school and stopping to pick up the remaining Green School Committee members at the Senior school so punctuality is important as we need to get there early.. It promises to be a great day out and will be attended by 5,000 youngsters from all over Ireland as well as some visiting other VIPs. We will return before the usual dismissal time. Please remind your child that they are expected to behave in public like young ladies and gentlemen in public, to stay with their group and obey all the teachers' instructions.
More information is available about the event on our school Green Pages, at
http://room5stlaurence.weebly.com/green-schools.html
where you can also read about our Forest project which has come in the top twenty in the whole country and Operation Birdsong Nation's competition to build a bird feeder or bird house for school this month from waste materials. Please fill out our survey on our blog page if you can.
Kind regards,
Orla Farrell, Joanna Coughlan, Claire Finnerty and Marian O Grady,
Green Schools Co-ordinators.
We were watching the Ireland-Wales match today and an ad came up about not discriminating.
Perhaps we could do a fun ad about planting every single kind of tree, tall, short....
We got in touch with a parent with expertise in this area to find out the school's Carbon Count. I wonder how many trees we would need to plant to offset our school's emissions?
We in Baldoyle because of our estuary and our proximity to Howth are one of only 600 plus biospheres in the world!
Dublin Bay has been designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. This was reported in the press in June, 2015.
Here is an RTE news clip explaining how special we are!
Global warming for kids;
Here is an explanation from NASA. Also a short animation on why it is useful to plant trees to avert further warming and other solutions. The following video explains the Greenhouse effect.
The daffodils are out! Time for a poem!
We are checking out video climate campaigns from around the world!
Afforestation is listed as the number 1 action on the 350 campaign solutions factsheet.
We found some great posters on 350 too.
Read about the GREAT GREEN WALL...a wall of trees that spreads across the whole of Africa! Wow!
A quote from Goethe, from the Teachers Without Borders Website,
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Pushit, and it will go nowhere at all.Dwight Eisenhower
So we will be intensifying our efforts to reduce emissions as part of this project. We held a Golden Shoe exhibition this month in Infants. You will love their exhibits. And we are so happy to have a new Golden Boot. I think the old one could go to the Senior School!
There has been an interesting proposal to plant lots of Autumn colour trees in Ireland. In Japan in an area with similar climate to Ireland, there is a huge tourist industry where people come to see the Autumn colour.
We got a great list of people who could help us who attended this conference. We will make a list of such people.
Crann have a link showing our friend Dale Tredwell helping schools plant trees over the years.
We looked up the guidelines for establishing native woodlands. Unfortunately, to get a grant they need to be 20 m wide which would not suit most schools. We could get in touch with the forestry department and see if they could find a grant for educational forests!
When designing your bird house consider a tray to stop waste and pest visitors!
Today James, a first year engineering student in Trinity we were telling about our project said
"It's a great idea. We were learning about the problem in college. There are two solutions; mopping up the emissions but the other part is reducing them in the first place. "
Only two steps!
That doesn't sound too hard!
It's as easy as 1, 2 TREE.
We could make really short films about this!
As we like the easy life, we like the idea of easy solutions. It is a bit like being babysitter to Planet Earth. It is easier when you are the babysitter not to make too big a mess as it is tiring to have to clean it all up. We will clean as we go. A lot of people are very good at this, the trick is they allocate time for the clean up as part of the day, not when they are tired and when the day is over. We have the figures now to calculate our emissions, let's work them out an work to clear them first.
Perhaps if all schools were like the school in Louth that has the heat pump it would address the problem at source? We could find out about changing this legislation! At the moment all schools have to use oil and gas. It is cheap now but not as clean as a heat pump!
We sent a scout to the Science Gallery to investigate the Art meets Science Trauma exhibition. There are lots of great books and kits in the shop explaining energy, we got some snaps.
There was an exhibition there called "Silence". That gave us the idea to do a film about the silence in our Junior school courtyards, where nobody has ever seen any birds landing. Maybe we could plant a teeny forest there too! Time to get measuring again. It would need to be in pots. We could do a film of the silence now and one in a few years, the after film, with birdsong.
The scout put a prayer in the church on Westland Row and lit a candle for the success of our project. They say it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. A lot of people give out about the weather, maybe they would like to plant a tree instead of giving out. Going to funerals people spend a lot of money on flowers. Maybe they would like to commemorate someone with a tree. We have one already at our school for a dear friend who died.
The other day the teachers collected money for a teacher's birthday cake. What about a birthday tree? How much would it cost do you think? More or less than a cake and card? Let's find out. People may need to know that the tree may be thinned in some years if it has insufficient room and may not be there forever. We could make them a card. We can ask Dale how much are his trees at the Expo.
We looked at how WeForest funds their work. People can get their tax back by donating to that charity. That is useful because schools have very many demands on their income.
People are having lots of fun making the bird houses. Here are more ideas for the window ones.
Here is a great link to Bird Life! We are reading a study on the STATE OF THE WORLD'S BIRDS. Bird life is a really great way to measure Biodiversity!
"An index based on population trends in a set of wild bird species has been adopted by the UK government as one of its fifteen headline indicators, out of a set of 150 core indicators of sustainable development. Such an index has resonance with policy-makers, politicians and the public alike. It also meets the key attributes of an effective bio-indicator, being quantitative, simplifying, user-driven, policy-relevant, scientifically credible, responsive to change, easily understood, realistic to collect and amenable to analysis (Gregory et al. 2003)."
We are sorted! If we count our birds we can easily measure our success!
There is bad news!In the U.K.
"Woodland birds also show a substantial... decline, suggesting that woodland habitats are also in trouble." Lucky we are acting now!
Also An index based on population trends in a set of wild bird species has been adopted by the UK government as one of its fifteen headline indicators for ‘Quality of life’.
Good news about our Logo. Anita Foley has a good friend who is a graphic designer. We are going to email him our logo and what we want and see what he comes up with! We are working on our logo. We like the lego look. We are looking at some images. This font is cool.We are also looking at the top logos in the world that are crowdsourced. It is very interesting to study. Image is very important and so is colour. Simplicity too. We like the Evernote elephant, the Nike tick, the youtube arrow. We think the name ForestAre is not too long so that is good. And a square is a good idea. Lots of colours can be expensive. We want to have more than one tree in a forest because that looks lonely, three would be better, or five maybe.
Here are some questions we are looking at in terms of our logo, even though we are not a company they are interesting to think about:
20 Questions To Ask Clients Prior To Designing A LogoBefore starting any project it’s essential to get the right preliminary information from your clients. This will help pave the way to a successful project, assist in bringing client’s vision into perspective and build a lasting relationship. Many of the questions below will also help in putting together an accurate quote for your client. Things such as deadlines, usage, etc. should take into account pricing.
Since my primary focus in is logo design, below are 20 questions to ask your clients prior to beginning their new logo design. Also, many of these questions can be applied to other forms of design, so feel free to integrate them into your questions for various forms of print and web design.
Company-related questions1- How would you describe your services and/or products?
Providing a template for growing your own tiny forest (ideally 100 square meters or more, which has been proven in other countries to be an optimum minimum size to easily promote biodiversity) in a school or other place where the planting will be done by amateurs, often children.
2- What are the long term goals of your company?
To help other people grow biodiverse forests by showing them our model, giving them lists of suitable trees and instructions on how to do it
3- Why do you want a new logo? (if they already have one) What do you want your new logo to accomplish? Our lego logo is our first draft. It was made by children in first class age 6 and 7 who do not know much about marketing. We want our logo to inspire confidence that our idea is a good one so we want it to look professional, modern and smart.
This question helps to understand the problem.
4- Who are your main competitors?
Landscapers
Having clients provide links allows you to get a better feel for their market and competition.
5- How are you different from your competitors?
6- What’s the age range of your target customer base?
Helps in creating an overall feeling and impression of the logo.
We want children to like our idea and to feel they can carry out the idea easily
Project-related questions7- Do you have a tag line? If so, would you like it stated along side your logo?
Easy as 1 - 2 - Tree
8- Do you have any specific imagery in mind for your logo?
Trees
9- Do you have any color preferences, or existing brand colors?
We like green. We need it to look good in black and white because sometimes we won't be printing it in colour. Just green might be handiest for using on a stencil. Green and black is easy to read. Or maybe wood tones like polished-hardwood brown, Maybe a childish square border with the lego colours, like google.
10- Do you have any colors that you do not wish to use?
11- What adjectives should best describe your logo?
Fun.Playful. Easy. Clear. Strong, sturdy and versatile like lego.
12- What feeling or message do you want your logo to convey to those who view it?
Excitement. Fun. I want one too. Confidence that their ForestAre will be great and a success.
13- How do you prefer your logo to be worded or written out?
Example: thedesigncubicle or the design cubicle
ForestAre
14- How would you like the typography to appear?
Example: script, bold, light, hand drawn, custom lettering
Lego style letters.
15- Where will you logo be used?
Example: print, web…Everywhere. Print. On films. On signs. On mugs, bags, pencilcases, pencils, promotional materials, stationery, the website, in the corner of posters, on cardboard boxes that arrive filled with trees, on a t shirt hoodie hat, in the newspapers, on TV, in the History Books! Lol.
16- Where will your logo primarily be used?
If the primary usage is for the web, typically horizontal logos work best.
17- What’s your preferred deadline, time frame or exact date of completion?
18- Budget? For a coffee or steak dinner please. If it is brilliant we will list you on our list of sponsors and name a tree after you.
This is where I provide various pricing and concept numbers.
19- Would you like any addition design services to be packaged with your new logo?
Example: business cards, envelops, letterheads, etc.
20- What logos appeal to you and why?
We like google. lego.
Another question they can also with links and visual examples.
I also like to leave my clients with a field or extra room at the end where they can provide additional details and comments. Remember, being a graphic designer means you are a problem solver. You cannot solve a problem without knowing what the problem is – asking questions is a great start. What questions do you ask your clients prior to starting a project? Feel free to add to the above questions in the comments below.
We are looking hard at the 100 square to help us with our logo. We thought it might make a good background. But the lego letters won't fit.
We are also researching logos we like. We don't actually like most of them. We think the writing should look like the message and that the colours should tell you about what you are representing.
Making earth cooler is a great tagline we could adapt; Making Ireland Cooler?
Here is lots of info about the Trees4Climate manifesto, which has excellent information.
Here is someone who went to Trinity College, Dublin from WeForest who might be able to help us!
Here is a paper on the science behind how trees can assist with flood mitigation.
Here is the overview on Biodiversity and trees.
Here is a powerful song for senior students. Man cannot eat money!
THE CLOSE TO Nature forestry principles, quoted in the Irish Times ten years ago are explained in the Local Project exhibition. Briefly, they involve planting a so-called pioneer species such as alder which has rapid early growth, then later planting in ash, sycamore, douglas fir or Norway maple and only later introducing oak as a so-called climax species. Managed carefully, this species mix will naturally protect and encourage growth in each variety.
We have signed up for the CRANN newsletter. They had an interesting press release, TREES FOR CLIMATE CHANGE.
Here is a local initiative for tree planting in collaboration with Fingal that may suit us.
And here is a letter explaining why clear felling is to be avoided and that our model of a biodiverse stand of trees is superior.
Real people Making Earth Cooler
Sailing, ballets, diamonds…and now saving the planet!
Fraser Brown is WeForest’s new Director of Global Strategy.
He is an experienced innovator and social entrepreneur.
His track record of founding and building entrepreneurial and social enterprises in the USA, the UK and Ireland for over twenty years bring very broad skill-sets and experiences to the WeForest team. Fraser has an MBA from Trinity College Dublin and ….he represented Ireland in the Olympic games in Athens 2004!
Orla Farrell has subscribed to WeForest for years. Her children were leaving their stuff around the house, such as on the stairs and she was afraid that someone would have an accident. She told them she would clamp their stuff during Lent if it was not in its place and they would have to pay a fine to get it back. She would give the fines to Weforest because she liked their project to replant the rainforest in Brazil. So that is what she did.
Parents; now that slapping was outlawed a few months ago, do you want to try the clamping idea? It worked for me!
Some people, like our facilitator, pronounced "Are" like "Ahr" so we will need people to be able to say the word. It does look like Are.
Then today, Aine thought it was spelled "Air" We looked up the definitions of Are and Hectare on Wikipedia and Are is not that common a word. Its symbol is simply a but that is even less well known. Hectare is very common though. Maybe we could call it a Forest Hectare and think big! We will need a hundred ares to make the hectare though!
We are writing goals, we wrote that as our goal on the goal tree for this year. We will need to be all lined up for November. Thinking big is fun. They say it can work better than thinking small!
We managed to get some honey from Howth. Because it is wildflower honey and is this season's we think the bees may have even visited our meadow last summer! We will have to check how far a bee can fly! We held a Bread and Wildflower Honey party today! We made 250 tiny sandwiches for everybody in the whole Junior School. They were a big hit! Almost everybody loved the honey and lots of children had never eaten it before.
Yes it is no longer January! Operation Sweetie Natiion is no more! But hey, we are packing a lot into 2016. Operation Sweaty Nation is not a popular name choice, but our GAA coaches today, Mark and Erica, were delighted with the name as they put first and second classes and later the afterschool programme through their paces. So Tweetie Nation succeeds Sweetie Nation, it sounds a good match to Sweetie!
We started the week with our survey for Birdwatch Ireland. There have been zero birds in the courtyard on both days; nobody has seen a bird there ever, it seems! But we spotted lots in the garden outside the window. We really need binoculars to be sure what we are looking at!
Clever creatures; we listened to the RTE "Dawn Chorus" cd and meditated to the sounds on Stop Think Breathe. It was very soothing.
We already know a lot about birds, we found out when going through our Bird Calendar. We could identify robin, swan, pigeon, magpie and owl. Only Orla Farrell has ever seen a kingfisher, when rowing on the Liffey. Here is a great eagle training video, I wonder will we ever see one over our school? It is catching drones.
We are checking out Twitter. It has fantastic news about what is going on in schools!
https://twitter.com/BioInSchools
We are checking out video climate campaigns from around the world!
Afforestation is listed as the number 1 action on the 350 campaign solutions factsheet.
We found some great posters on 350 too.
Read about the GREAT GREEN WALL...a wall of trees that spreads across the whole of Africa! Wow!
A quote from Goethe, from the Teachers Without Borders Website,
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Pushit, and it will go nowhere at all.Dwight Eisenhower
So we will be intensifying our efforts to reduce emissions as part of this project. We held a Golden Shoe exhibition this month in Infants. You will love their exhibits. And we are so happy to have a new Golden Boot. I think the old one could go to the Senior School!
There has been an interesting proposal to plant lots of Autumn colour trees in Ireland. In Japan in an area with similar climate to Ireland, there is a huge tourist industry where people come to see the Autumn colour.
We got a great list of people who could help us who attended this conference. We will make a list of such people.
Crann have a link showing our friend Dale Tredwell helping schools plant trees over the years.
We looked up the guidelines for establishing native woodlands. Unfortunately, to get a grant they need to be 20 m wide which would not suit most schools. We could get in touch with the forestry department and see if they could find a grant for educational forests!
When designing your bird house consider a tray to stop waste and pest visitors!
Today James, a first year engineering student in Trinity we were telling about our project said
"It's a great idea. We were learning about the problem in college. There are two solutions; mopping up the emissions but the other part is reducing them in the first place. "
Only two steps!
That doesn't sound too hard!
It's as easy as 1, 2 TREE.
We could make really short films about this!
As we like the easy life, we like the idea of easy solutions. It is a bit like being babysitter to Planet Earth. It is easier when you are the babysitter not to make too big a mess as it is tiring to have to clean it all up. We will clean as we go. A lot of people are very good at this, the trick is they allocate time for the clean up as part of the day, not when they are tired and when the day is over. We have the figures now to calculate our emissions, let's work them out an work to clear them first.
Perhaps if all schools were like the school in Louth that has the heat pump it would address the problem at source? We could find out about changing this legislation! At the moment all schools have to use oil and gas. It is cheap now but not as clean as a heat pump!
We sent a scout to the Science Gallery to investigate the Art meets Science Trauma exhibition. There are lots of great books and kits in the shop explaining energy, we got some snaps.
There was an exhibition there called "Silence". That gave us the idea to do a film about the silence in our Junior school courtyards, where nobody has ever seen any birds landing. Maybe we could plant a teeny forest there too! Time to get measuring again. It would need to be in pots. We could do a film of the silence now and one in a few years, the after film, with birdsong.
The scout put a prayer in the church on Westland Row and lit a candle for the success of our project. They say it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. A lot of people give out about the weather, maybe they would like to plant a tree instead of giving out. Going to funerals people spend a lot of money on flowers. Maybe they would like to commemorate someone with a tree. We have one already at our school for a dear friend who died.
The other day the teachers collected money for a teacher's birthday cake. What about a birthday tree? How much would it cost do you think? More or less than a cake and card? Let's find out. People may need to know that the tree may be thinned in some years if it has insufficient room and may not be there forever. We could make them a card. We can ask Dale how much are his trees at the Expo.
We looked at how WeForest funds their work. People can get their tax back by donating to that charity. That is useful because schools have very many demands on their income.
People are having lots of fun making the bird houses. Here are more ideas for the window ones.
Here is a great link to Bird Life! We are reading a study on the STATE OF THE WORLD'S BIRDS. Bird life is a really great way to measure Biodiversity!
"An index based on population trends in a set of wild bird species has been adopted by the UK government as one of its fifteen headline indicators, out of a set of 150 core indicators of sustainable development. Such an index has resonance with policy-makers, politicians and the public alike. It also meets the key attributes of an effective bio-indicator, being quantitative, simplifying, user-driven, policy-relevant, scientifically credible, responsive to change, easily understood, realistic to collect and amenable to analysis (Gregory et al. 2003)."
We are sorted! If we count our birds we can easily measure our success!
There is bad news!In the U.K.
"Woodland birds also show a substantial... decline, suggesting that woodland habitats are also in trouble." Lucky we are acting now!
Also An index based on population trends in a set of wild bird species has been adopted by the UK government as one of its fifteen headline indicators for ‘Quality of life’.
Good news about our Logo. Anita Foley has a good friend who is a graphic designer. We are going to email him our logo and what we want and see what he comes up with! We are working on our logo. We like the lego look. We are looking at some images. This font is cool.We are also looking at the top logos in the world that are crowdsourced. It is very interesting to study. Image is very important and so is colour. Simplicity too. We like the Evernote elephant, the Nike tick, the youtube arrow. We think the name ForestAre is not too long so that is good. And a square is a good idea. Lots of colours can be expensive. We want to have more than one tree in a forest because that looks lonely, three would be better, or five maybe.
Here are some questions we are looking at in terms of our logo, even though we are not a company they are interesting to think about:
20 Questions To Ask Clients Prior To Designing A LogoBefore starting any project it’s essential to get the right preliminary information from your clients. This will help pave the way to a successful project, assist in bringing client’s vision into perspective and build a lasting relationship. Many of the questions below will also help in putting together an accurate quote for your client. Things such as deadlines, usage, etc. should take into account pricing.
Since my primary focus in is logo design, below are 20 questions to ask your clients prior to beginning their new logo design. Also, many of these questions can be applied to other forms of design, so feel free to integrate them into your questions for various forms of print and web design.
Company-related questions1- How would you describe your services and/or products?
Providing a template for growing your own tiny forest (ideally 100 square meters or more, which has been proven in other countries to be an optimum minimum size to easily promote biodiversity) in a school or other place where the planting will be done by amateurs, often children.
2- What are the long term goals of your company?
To help other people grow biodiverse forests by showing them our model, giving them lists of suitable trees and instructions on how to do it
3- Why do you want a new logo? (if they already have one) What do you want your new logo to accomplish? Our lego logo is our first draft. It was made by children in first class age 6 and 7 who do not know much about marketing. We want our logo to inspire confidence that our idea is a good one so we want it to look professional, modern and smart.
This question helps to understand the problem.
4- Who are your main competitors?
Landscapers
Having clients provide links allows you to get a better feel for their market and competition.
5- How are you different from your competitors?
6- What’s the age range of your target customer base?
Helps in creating an overall feeling and impression of the logo.
We want children to like our idea and to feel they can carry out the idea easily
Project-related questions7- Do you have a tag line? If so, would you like it stated along side your logo?
Easy as 1 - 2 - Tree
8- Do you have any specific imagery in mind for your logo?
Trees
9- Do you have any color preferences, or existing brand colors?
We like green. We need it to look good in black and white because sometimes we won't be printing it in colour. Just green might be handiest for using on a stencil. Green and black is easy to read. Or maybe wood tones like polished-hardwood brown, Maybe a childish square border with the lego colours, like google.
10- Do you have any colors that you do not wish to use?
11- What adjectives should best describe your logo?
Fun.Playful. Easy. Clear. Strong, sturdy and versatile like lego.
12- What feeling or message do you want your logo to convey to those who view it?
Excitement. Fun. I want one too. Confidence that their ForestAre will be great and a success.
13- How do you prefer your logo to be worded or written out?
Example: thedesigncubicle or the design cubicle
ForestAre
14- How would you like the typography to appear?
Example: script, bold, light, hand drawn, custom lettering
Lego style letters.
15- Where will you logo be used?
Example: print, web…Everywhere. Print. On films. On signs. On mugs, bags, pencilcases, pencils, promotional materials, stationery, the website, in the corner of posters, on cardboard boxes that arrive filled with trees, on a t shirt hoodie hat, in the newspapers, on TV, in the History Books! Lol.
16- Where will your logo primarily be used?
If the primary usage is for the web, typically horizontal logos work best.
17- What’s your preferred deadline, time frame or exact date of completion?
18- Budget? For a coffee or steak dinner please. If it is brilliant we will list you on our list of sponsors and name a tree after you.
This is where I provide various pricing and concept numbers.
19- Would you like any addition design services to be packaged with your new logo?
Example: business cards, envelops, letterheads, etc.
20- What logos appeal to you and why?
We like google. lego.
Another question they can also with links and visual examples.
I also like to leave my clients with a field or extra room at the end where they can provide additional details and comments. Remember, being a graphic designer means you are a problem solver. You cannot solve a problem without knowing what the problem is – asking questions is a great start. What questions do you ask your clients prior to starting a project? Feel free to add to the above questions in the comments below.
We are looking hard at the 100 square to help us with our logo. We thought it might make a good background. But the lego letters won't fit.
We are also researching logos we like. We don't actually like most of them. We think the writing should look like the message and that the colours should tell you about what you are representing.
Making earth cooler is a great tagline we could adapt; Making Ireland Cooler?
Here is lots of info about the Trees4Climate manifesto, which has excellent information.
Here is someone who went to Trinity College, Dublin from WeForest who might be able to help us!
Here is a paper on the science behind how trees can assist with flood mitigation.
Here is the overview on Biodiversity and trees.
Here is a powerful song for senior students. Man cannot eat money!
THE CLOSE TO Nature forestry principles, quoted in the Irish Times ten years ago are explained in the Local Project exhibition. Briefly, they involve planting a so-called pioneer species such as alder which has rapid early growth, then later planting in ash, sycamore, douglas fir or Norway maple and only later introducing oak as a so-called climax species. Managed carefully, this species mix will naturally protect and encourage growth in each variety.
We have signed up for the CRANN newsletter. They had an interesting press release, TREES FOR CLIMATE CHANGE.
Here is a local initiative for tree planting in collaboration with Fingal that may suit us.
And here is a letter explaining why clear felling is to be avoided and that our model of a biodiverse stand of trees is superior.
Real people Making Earth Cooler
Sailing, ballets, diamonds…and now saving the planet!
Fraser Brown is WeForest’s new Director of Global Strategy.
He is an experienced innovator and social entrepreneur.
His track record of founding and building entrepreneurial and social enterprises in the USA, the UK and Ireland for over twenty years bring very broad skill-sets and experiences to the WeForest team. Fraser has an MBA from Trinity College Dublin and ….he represented Ireland in the Olympic games in Athens 2004!
Orla Farrell has subscribed to WeForest for years. Her children were leaving their stuff around the house, such as on the stairs and she was afraid that someone would have an accident. She told them she would clamp their stuff during Lent if it was not in its place and they would have to pay a fine to get it back. She would give the fines to Weforest because she liked their project to replant the rainforest in Brazil. So that is what she did.
Parents; now that slapping was outlawed a few months ago, do you want to try the clamping idea? It worked for me!
Some people, like our facilitator, pronounced "Are" like "Ahr" so we will need people to be able to say the word. It does look like Are.
Then today, Aine thought it was spelled "Air" We looked up the definitions of Are and Hectare on Wikipedia and Are is not that common a word. Its symbol is simply a but that is even less well known. Hectare is very common though. Maybe we could call it a Forest Hectare and think big! We will need a hundred ares to make the hectare though!
We are writing goals, we wrote that as our goal on the goal tree for this year. We will need to be all lined up for November. Thinking big is fun. They say it can work better than thinking small!
We managed to get some honey from Howth. Because it is wildflower honey and is this season's we think the bees may have even visited our meadow last summer! We will have to check how far a bee can fly! We held a Bread and Wildflower Honey party today! We made 250 tiny sandwiches for everybody in the whole Junior School. They were a big hit! Almost everybody loved the honey and lots of children had never eaten it before.
Yes it is no longer January! Operation Sweetie Natiion is no more! But hey, we are packing a lot into 2016. Operation Sweaty Nation is not a popular name choice, but our GAA coaches today, Mark and Erica, were delighted with the name as they put first and second classes and later the afterschool programme through their paces. So Tweetie Nation succeeds Sweetie Nation, it sounds a good match to Sweetie!
We started the week with our survey for Birdwatch Ireland. There have been zero birds in the courtyard on both days; nobody has seen a bird there ever, it seems! But we spotted lots in the garden outside the window. We really need binoculars to be sure what we are looking at!
Clever creatures; we listened to the RTE "Dawn Chorus" cd and meditated to the sounds on Stop Think Breathe. It was very soothing.
We already know a lot about birds, we found out when going through our Bird Calendar. We could identify robin, swan, pigeon, magpie and owl. Only Orla Farrell has ever seen a kingfisher, when rowing on the Liffey. Here is a great eagle training video, I wonder will we ever see one over our school? It is catching drones.
We are checking out Twitter. It has fantastic news about what is going on in schools!
https://twitter.com/BioInSchools
We have Valentine's Day coming up!
Here are some seed packet colouring-in packets, they would be fun to make.
http://artscrackers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Printable-Valentines-Seed-Envelopes-Free1.pdf
We have a new PINTEREST page with ideas for ForestAre. Check it out!
xHere are some Art ideas from Deep in the Forest on Pinterest. .https://www.pinterest.com/rrobin902/deep-in-the-forest/?utm_campaign=bprecs&e_t=a847e0d054284767a9e5c3c40b8ec89b&utm_content=279786264289412129&utm_source=31&utm_term=1&utm_medium=2004
The team mentioned that Twitter does remind you of birds and that we might think of putting things up on Twitter.
Our facilitator also mentioned setting up a Facebook page. Today we are watching Eco Eye!
Sean Garvey from Letterfrack spoke about how hardwood furniture made in Ireland is mostly made from imported timber, because not enough Irish timber is available. There is a lack of supply of good hardwood. They have planted a native woodland educational plot, just like ours! Theirs is 5 acres. They got people in the college and the community to do the planting. They can learn a lot from this forest, for example about problems growing timber. Lots of thinnings will become available in the years to come and we need to think about what value we can add to this wood.
We learned tons of new information about Biodiversity. Duncan Steward repeated the statistic that only 11 per cent of the are of Ireland is forested. But what we were surprised by is that only 1 per cent of that is native woodland! Most of our forests are monoculture. Paddy Purser of Pro Silva Ireland pointed out that we keep carbon in the woodland when we manage a forest in the traditional way and do not knock it all down at once every 70 years or more often as happens now. When wood is burned the carbon is released. By keeping all our eggs in one basket, when there is a disease the whole forest can be wiped out.
Because of climate change it is important to take carbon out of the atmosphere.
We saw a woodworker, Mark Donnelly talk about how lovely furniture is that is made from wood. He is making a counter top from a tree planted in 1815 to celebrate the victory of Waterloo and he is fitting it in a house dating from 1815!
This gave us the idea that if we make our bird houses and feedersof wood, it will tie up carbon!
Episode 5 - 'Rethinking Forestry' (TX 2nd Feb)
- Presented by Duncan StewartWhen some people look at landscape they see just that, but when Duncan looks at Irelands landscape he sees conflict for vital resources. Land in Ireland has multiple uses, food production, quarries, roads, timber production, biodiversity, biofuels and an intrinsic value of landscape that can't be quantified.
The planet can't survive without forestry, and Ireland is doing it's bit to increase forest cover, but is there a new way to think about forestry that is both good for the economy, puts money in our pockets, helps the environment and the birds and bees?
Duncan and Anja explore what the solutions are for the conflict in Irelands land and how different types of forestry can work for a multiple of services, together they will explore what is the future for forestry in Ireland
Episode 6 - 'The Future of Energy' (TX 9th Feb)
- Presented by Lara Dungan
Undoubtedly, Fossil fuels have played an extraordinary role in the recent evolution of society and our quality of lives. But one way or another the world needs to transition away from these polluting finite resources. We'll either decide to stop burning fossil fuels, or we'll run out of them.
The global transition to an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use is planned to happen over the next 35 years. This is an extraordinary challenge and some fear will have a crippling effect on our economy and way of life, effectively returning us to the dark ages.
But what does this 'low carbon' future really mean for you and me? And what technologies are we likely to adapt in Ireland to get us to this new world?
Science communicator Dr Lara Dungan will take a closer look at the technologies that could help us to live in a world of no fossil fuels and no pollution and grow our economy while improving our lifestyles. From futuristic electric cars, ocean energy, new solar panels and homes of the future Lara will explore the best technologies that could help us power our future economy and give us hope for a better future.
Some info here from the TED site of interest to senior students. telling us more about Johan Rockström's theory.
"As our civilizations developed, we’ve transformed the landscape by cutting down forests and growing crops."
We read Mary Robinson's article in the Irish Times about climate change,
Many people living along the coast of cities could find their homes under water with even a moderate sea-level change, former president Mary Robinson has warned.
We checked out CHANGE X. It inspires change through behaviour. You can click on the video about Kilbarrack fire station here.
A really interesting group which suits us is the 350 group. Here is a great video for everybody about what has to be done.
We will discuss whether this would be a good resource for us.
Afforest are using open-source machinery that means one person could cheaply plant a hundred trees in a day! Wow!
Stephen Fry has done the commentary on this 3 minute video on how forest can halt global warming in its tracks!
I never thought of trees as the planet's hair. It might take a while to dry a lot of hair on a head, maybe two or three hours if you don't use a hairdryer but when you are bald, it dries really fast. Our planet is like that! The rain runs off bare earth to the streams in minutes, washing more earth with it but when it is forested, the trees retain the water and the streams are kept clean.
We found a children's song on youtube which the Infants may like or we could adapt.
Here are some seed packet colouring-in packets, they would be fun to make.
http://artscrackers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Printable-Valentines-Seed-Envelopes-Free1.pdf
We have a new PINTEREST page with ideas for ForestAre. Check it out!
xHere are some Art ideas from Deep in the Forest on Pinterest. .https://www.pinterest.com/rrobin902/deep-in-the-forest/?utm_campaign=bprecs&e_t=a847e0d054284767a9e5c3c40b8ec89b&utm_content=279786264289412129&utm_source=31&utm_term=1&utm_medium=2004
The team mentioned that Twitter does remind you of birds and that we might think of putting things up on Twitter.
Our facilitator also mentioned setting up a Facebook page. Today we are watching Eco Eye!
Sean Garvey from Letterfrack spoke about how hardwood furniture made in Ireland is mostly made from imported timber, because not enough Irish timber is available. There is a lack of supply of good hardwood. They have planted a native woodland educational plot, just like ours! Theirs is 5 acres. They got people in the college and the community to do the planting. They can learn a lot from this forest, for example about problems growing timber. Lots of thinnings will become available in the years to come and we need to think about what value we can add to this wood.
We learned tons of new information about Biodiversity. Duncan Steward repeated the statistic that only 11 per cent of the are of Ireland is forested. But what we were surprised by is that only 1 per cent of that is native woodland! Most of our forests are monoculture. Paddy Purser of Pro Silva Ireland pointed out that we keep carbon in the woodland when we manage a forest in the traditional way and do not knock it all down at once every 70 years or more often as happens now. When wood is burned the carbon is released. By keeping all our eggs in one basket, when there is a disease the whole forest can be wiped out.
Because of climate change it is important to take carbon out of the atmosphere.
We saw a woodworker, Mark Donnelly talk about how lovely furniture is that is made from wood. He is making a counter top from a tree planted in 1815 to celebrate the victory of Waterloo and he is fitting it in a house dating from 1815!
This gave us the idea that if we make our bird houses and feedersof wood, it will tie up carbon!
Episode 5 - 'Rethinking Forestry' (TX 2nd Feb)
- Presented by Duncan StewartWhen some people look at landscape they see just that, but when Duncan looks at Irelands landscape he sees conflict for vital resources. Land in Ireland has multiple uses, food production, quarries, roads, timber production, biodiversity, biofuels and an intrinsic value of landscape that can't be quantified.
The planet can't survive without forestry, and Ireland is doing it's bit to increase forest cover, but is there a new way to think about forestry that is both good for the economy, puts money in our pockets, helps the environment and the birds and bees?
Duncan and Anja explore what the solutions are for the conflict in Irelands land and how different types of forestry can work for a multiple of services, together they will explore what is the future for forestry in Ireland
Episode 6 - 'The Future of Energy' (TX 9th Feb)
- Presented by Lara Dungan
Undoubtedly, Fossil fuels have played an extraordinary role in the recent evolution of society and our quality of lives. But one way or another the world needs to transition away from these polluting finite resources. We'll either decide to stop burning fossil fuels, or we'll run out of them.
The global transition to an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use is planned to happen over the next 35 years. This is an extraordinary challenge and some fear will have a crippling effect on our economy and way of life, effectively returning us to the dark ages.
But what does this 'low carbon' future really mean for you and me? And what technologies are we likely to adapt in Ireland to get us to this new world?
Science communicator Dr Lara Dungan will take a closer look at the technologies that could help us to live in a world of no fossil fuels and no pollution and grow our economy while improving our lifestyles. From futuristic electric cars, ocean energy, new solar panels and homes of the future Lara will explore the best technologies that could help us power our future economy and give us hope for a better future.
Some info here from the TED site of interest to senior students. telling us more about Johan Rockström's theory.
"As our civilizations developed, we’ve transformed the landscape by cutting down forests and growing crops."
We read Mary Robinson's article in the Irish Times about climate change,
Many people living along the coast of cities could find their homes under water with even a moderate sea-level change, former president Mary Robinson has warned.
We checked out CHANGE X. It inspires change through behaviour. You can click on the video about Kilbarrack fire station here.
A really interesting group which suits us is the 350 group. Here is a great video for everybody about what has to be done.
We will discuss whether this would be a good resource for us.
Afforest are using open-source machinery that means one person could cheaply plant a hundred trees in a day! Wow!
Stephen Fry has done the commentary on this 3 minute video on how forest can halt global warming in its tracks!
I never thought of trees as the planet's hair. It might take a while to dry a lot of hair on a head, maybe two or three hours if you don't use a hairdryer but when you are bald, it dries really fast. Our planet is like that! The rain runs off bare earth to the streams in minutes, washing more earth with it but when it is forested, the trees retain the water and the streams are kept clean.
We found a children's song on youtube which the Infants may like or we could adapt.