Birdwatching Spot of the Week - the Robin

Hello again! This week we gave the wildlife garden a bit of TLC. Thanks to May from Class 1 who litter picked with me on Monday and Tommy, Lucas, Jessica, Jack D, Sachin and Nikita from Year 2 who filled up the bird feeders and put bird seed on the bird table as part of birdwatching club this week. Not such a good week this time for spotting birds but when you look at this lot - it's hardly surprising the birds decided to hide.....

We did manage to spot woodpigeons, crows, seagulls, a blackbird and the spot of the week - a robin, spotted by Tommy and Lucas in the wildlife garden. Robins are not just around at Christmas - look out for their red front all year round. I would love to hear if you spot a robin in your garden this week.

One last thing - this weekend is the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch - if you go to their website you can find out how you can get involved too http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/takepart.aspx
Until next time.....Mrs Longmoor

Birdwatching Club - Spot of the Week - the Magpie

Well done to Jordan for picking out the songs and noises from the birds too. Archie was our recorder and wrote down all the birds we spotted which were:
Seagull
Carrion Crow
Collared Dove
Pigeon
Blue Tit
Long-tailed Tit (a lovely little fat bird with a very long tail and pink tummy)
and
My Spot of the Week - a Magpie spotted by Lawson

Magpies are easy to spot - they are quite big, quite noisy and have very distinctive black and white feathers. See if you can spot a magpie this week and....keep watching the skies! 

Mrs. Longmoor

Good start to the year

On Friday we held a bring and buy sale so that we had a guilt free way to pass on unwanted Christmas presents!  There was also a nearly new uniform sale.  The collection for the Aquabox is going really well.  There are just a few more items to collect before the box can be packed and sent to where it's needed......thanks.

Just before Christmas, we managed to plant the tulips for the mapping climate change project,  there had been snow on the ground when we had originally planned to plant.  Mrs Longmoor, Mr Meller and Mrs Hallows, braved the bad weather and planted 250 Red Emperor bulbs, one for each pupil in the school.  The tulips are an early flowering variety and registering when they flower on the Journey North website will help map the arrival of Spring worldwide and the effects of climate change.

Birdwatching Club News

The first meeting for birdwatching club was a great success. Members from Year 2 spotted 8 different types of bird in just twenty minutes. They were:

Collared Dove

Wood Pigeon

Blackbird

Seagull (lots of these)

Robin (who was singing very noisily)
Blue Tit
Starlings (a whole flock flew over)
Crow (in the top of a tree)

If you would like to see pictures of these birds - have a look at the Birdwatching Club section of the Eco Team notice board in the family room. You can also find pictures of birds to colour in and magazines which you can borrow. Until next week - keep twitching!
Mrs. Longmoor

Birdwatching club

Mrs Longmoor will be running a birdwatching club on Wednesday lunchtimes.  We'll be updating the blog with news of our feathered visitors.

Recycling month

Happy New Year!  At Parklands, January has been designated as recycling month. Please bring in your Christmas cards for recycling by The Woodland Trust.  We want to create a huge pile to show just how much recycling we as a community create.  The children will be learning about recycling in assembly; did you know that it takes 100,000 years for a glass bottle to break down in a landfill site?  Plastic bottles never break down.

• Recycling helps to tackle climate change. Waste sent to landfill can create methane – a powerful greenhouse gas. If we all recycle just one card this Christmas this would save 1,570 tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases – the same as taking 500 cars off the road for a year.
• Recycling cards makes people think about consumer waste – particularly relevant at Christmas.
• 73.6 million cards were recycled by the scheme in 2008.