Children at Tops Day Nurseries have organised a beach clean in order to take a step towards their Bronze Eco School Award.
Eco-Schools is a global programme engaging millions of children across 64 different countries, making it the largest environmental schools programme in the world.
The programme provides a framework for learning and action around nine topics – biodiversity, energy, litter, global citizenship, healthy living, school grounds, transport, waste and water. It follows a very simple seven-step process to lead schools on their journey to achieving a Green Flag Award.
Stacey Nash, Nursery Manager at Tops Bournemouth said “Recently as a company we are looking at ways to teach the children how to recycle and reuse. We have now signed up to Eco –Schools which enables the children to look at ways to help save the planet on a smaller scale. We discussed with the children the different topics and from this one child spoke about the rubbish they found on the beach. We all thought it would be a good idea to go to the beach and help clean up the rubbish to help the fish. The children are constantly talking about how they are going to help the different animals in the sea.”
The idea of a beach clean was a favourite amongst the children, as they have been learning about the dangers of plastic pollution by reading the story “Duffy the sea turtle”. Duffy’s Lucky Escape is an engaging story of the relationship between humans and wildlife and the dangers turtles face in their own natural habitats due to ocean plastic. Stunning artwork captures the imagination of young readers and brings to life a very real threat to our oceans.
The children from Tops Bournemouth, Boscombe, Christchurch, Charminster, Wimborne and Corfe Mullen collected their equipment and headed to Boscombe Pier, where they were able to collect rubbish from the sand to stop the plastic reaching the ocean.
The children really enjoyed helping to put the rubbish into a bin bag and were very proud of themselves when looking at how clean the beach was afterwards.
When the children got back to the nursery the Preschool children had a discussion about what we can do to reduce rubbish on the beach and how they can help themselves. One child from Tops Corfe Mullen suggested using the recycling bin and another wanted to go back to the beach to collect more rubbish.
