Wilder School - Dennington Primary

Wild Learning Officer Emma Keeble visited Dennington Primary school. The children drew maps of their grounds, detailing different habitats, answered questions on how they feel about nature and then surveyed wildlife in their grounds. There were certainly some surprises... we never expected to find a great crested newt hiding under a paving slab!

The children were so excited to find the newt and were already coming up with lots of ideas for things they would like to add to their grounds to provide refuge and food for newts – a nice little project we set them off on to research before our next visit!

Our second visit saw us putting some maths into real world context and taking to the playing field with trundle wheels and tape measures to measure the existing habitats. We focused on measuring the area of cut grass, length and width of hedges, counted the number of standard trees and catalogued numbers of additional green infrastructure such as nest boxes (0!), hedgehog homes (1), bird feeders (0), pollinator pitstops (0) and log piles (2).

As it was armistice day, we also took a moment out to make some poppies using the beautiful red leaves of the cherry tree in the school grounds, drilling conkers to make the center of the flowers and building on some sewing practice the class had done earlier in the week to sew the leaves together. 

Today saw us back at Dennington working with Wren class surveying the grounds for their value to wildlife. We focused on 10 key species, some of which are priority species for Suffolk Wildlife Trust within our current strategy, and others those that are relatively easy to cater for and in doing so, will provide for many others too. We then consolidated this information into a list of habitat requirements for each species and colour coded our list using a traffic light system for things that were easy to implement (green), possible but may need extra help or need a little more work (yellow) and those we didn't think were viable (red). It was great to see most of our list was green!

We've had a fab visit to Dennington primary school as part of our Wilder school project today, We came up with a master plan for what we want to do to make Dennington better for wildlife and started to implement it by building bird boxes, making bird feeders and making posters to send to parents asking for donations of resources to help us to move forward with plans next month.

Well what an awesomely productive day we had with Wren class at Dennington today!! The sun shone on us all day and spurred these amazing youngsters on to create some fantastic spaces for wildlife!! Donations of pallets, tiles, broken bricks, pots, piping, logs and straw bales were put to great use and allowed us to create not one but TWO invertebrate high rises complete with soil roof which will be planted up with herbs on our next visit.. We ressurected vegetable beds and prepped the soil for planting next month; created a new digging area with topsoil donated by a very friendly neighbour; created a stumpery with tree roots and logs from said neighbour; installed a water feature (aka a pig trough) to serve as a well needed water source for visiting wildlife; built a reptile palace from bits of stone and brick to provide a basking spot for cold blooded visitors; and lastly, used compasses to determine location and directional facing of the bird boxes we made last visit.

To top it all off, we ended a busy day by presenting an assembly to the rest of the school, sharing our vision with them and explaining what we had been up to throughout the day

Go team Wren!!

The school had a jumble sale planned to raise money for new play equipment so Wren class came up with an idea to raise some funds for Wilder School at the same time. They created a wish list of all the items they still wanted to help them realise their vision of a wilder school grounds. The researched prices and created posters to publicise what they would like sponsorship of. Eg a bat boxes, bird seed and bird feeders, wildflower seed, peat free compost, planters etc. We then created a display of their art work and a snapshot of what we have done so far and set up a table manned by Emma and some of Wren class. People were really interested in their vision and very keen to help, we raised an impressive £145, not bad for a mornings work!

We’ve had a fab visit to Dennington Primary today! Working with Wren class, we’ve been putting the proceeds of our fundraising efforts to great use planting herbs, fruit and vegetables, fruit trees, sunflowers, building insect hotels and identifying how to spend the rest of the funds!

Another fab day Wrens, you are amazing, can’t wait to see all those seedlings come up and transform your grounds!

We had a great afternoon at Dennington today. The herbs we sowed last month are coming up nicely, sunflowers have germinated, strawberry, carrots, broccoli and rainbow chard are all poking their heads above ground so we fashioned watering cans out of upcycled milk cartons to give them all a much needed drink. We also sowed seeds given to schools for the kings coronation AND.... We challenged Robin class to a wild off for #30dayswild stating next week, which class (or teacher) can be wildest for the full 30 days of June?!

It was a hot sunny one today so we took refuge in the afternoon in the cool shade of the churchyard. We are keen to encourage swifts to nest on the school grounds and have been lucky enough to receive 4 swift boxes from the Save Our Suffolk Swifts (SOS Swift) group plus a swift call system to put up on the hall. Swifts are nesting in the church tower so we took a wander to the churchyard to see what they have in that county wildlife site that we are missing at school. The verdict: lots of long grass and wildflowers which are teaming with invertebrates! 

We wrote thankyou letters to SOS Swifts for the boxes and call system and to a local man who very kindly donated wooden planters to the school to help us achieve our vision. 

we also checked the hedgehog footprint tunnels that had been put around the grounds, no sign of any hedgehog activity but a local cat had certainly left its inky paw print along with some mice and snail trails.

What a fab final session of the term we had with Wrens! Today saw us on a wheelbarrow safari through the village to collect top soil from a local building site (with permission of the owners of course)! Back at school the soil was then used to fill one of our new planters donated by a fantastic local tradesperson before some of Swallow class planted out salvias, lavender, snapdragons and other species to attract pollinators.

We continued with watering of the wildflower seeded areas, pruned the hedge behind the stumpery to stop the bramble taking over (bramble is a fantastic habitat but there is so much in the hedge already, we didn't want it to take over the stumpery too). in addition a few of the team turned their hands too woodwork and crafted mini planters to go on top of the bug hotels and be planted with succulents and drought tolerant plants more able to withstand the exposed location. The swift boxes were given a facelift ready to go up in the new year too. Then in the afternoon, we invited the other year groups to join us on the field and hear all about what Wrens had been up to and find out what is still to come over the upcoming year. What a brilliant session Wrens!

Today saw us back at Dennington for year 2 of the project, Having found planting on top of our bug hotel didn't work as the soil and water just ran off, we decided we needed to create a frame. so saws and timber to hand, our industrious Wren class set about building a frame to fit perfectly on top of the hotel and then planted it up. A dab hand with tools, they also constructed a compost heap!

The second part of the day saw us running a CPD session for some of the staff looking at how to use maths in the outdoors and introducing the ethos and principles of Forest School ahead of some very exciting developments on this front as the school have been given exclusive use of their very own woodland on a neighbouring farm!!

Swift boxes go up!! today saw a parent and local tree surgeon installing the swift boxes and call system on the school hall. Just in time as we are starting to see groups of screaming swifts flying around the village, fingers crossed some of this years fledglings remember and come back to check out these beautfully decorated boxes in the new year!

Today's tasks: emptying a trailer load of soil kindly donated by a local farming family to fill our planters and sow with wildflower seed and plants left over from our local group plant sale.

Planting silver birch trees, weeding the strawberry bed, planting runner beans, watching for swifts screaming around our newly installed swift boxes, making signs to help others in the school identify some of the plants that have come up since last year and remind them not to pick them (!) And writing a letter to the local swift group to ask them if they would run an assembly for the whole school to learn more about swifts.

Oh and get them to all sign up to #30DaysWild !

What a lucky group of children - a local farming family have donated the school a woodland for their exclusive use for Forest School!!!!!! One staff member has completed his Forest School training with SWT and we will continue to support as they get their FS going, what an exciting new venture!

today saw us visiting the site with Wren class and exploring, making signs and a sitting circle as we explore the area, the children will visit this wood once a week for the entire term. Each class in the school will visit the site in all seasons to experience and observe how the woodland changes through the year.