Wilder School - Kyson Primary School

On 31^th October we visited Kyson primary school. We started with an assembly first thing to the whole school to introduce the project and then working with the two year 4 classes, we focused on mapping the current habitats and looking to see what’s there at the minute. The children were surprised to see how many mushrooms had popped up while they were off on half term!

We’ll be back in a couple of weeks to discuss some initial Ideas for making Kyson an even #WilderSchool

On our second visit,  we carried out some baseline measurements of the existing habitats and counted green infrastructure (bird boxes, stag beetle piles, bird feeders etc) to compare at the end and measure our impact.

We also surveyed the suitability of the grounds for some key priority species to see how good the grounds currently are for things like stag beetle, swifts, bees and hedgehogs. Next month we will use these findings to plan how we are going to make Kyson an even Wilder school!

Today saw us pulling together all the information we gathered on our previous visit and compiling a 'Master plan'. With cold weather approaching wee also made bird feeders using lard, pine cones and seed and wrote letters to local nurseries asking if they had any plants or fruit trees they would be willing to donate to help us make our vision a reality.

Our first session back for the new year saw us getting on with some of the practical elements of our master plan by constructing bird boxes. These will be located around the grounds to encourage more feathered visitors onto the site. many of the surrounding gardens are full of birds and there are a lot that can be heard from the field so with these boxes and the feeders we plan to put out we hope to attract them beyond the fences and provide nesting sites for Kyson's feathered friends.

Today we visited Year 4 at Kyson and worked on implementing more of our ‘master plan’

We planted a living willow fedge (a cross between a fence and a hedge) designed by the children and made seeded recycled paper which we will turn into Easter cards and sell to raise funds to realise more of our ideas!

We visited Kyson to check on the progress of the fedge (it's looking awesome!), They also created a stag beetle stack, sowed wildflower seeds in commemoration of the coronation, weeded and reinstated veg beds and planted a couple of new trees. Fab work year 4!

The students had a wildlife themed bake off at the start of the month. They made LOADS of cakes and raised a whopping £500+ to help them achieve their vision of a wilder school grounds!!

Today saw us planting lavender, buddleia and clematis bought with these funds, building hedgehog boxes, shopping for bird feeders and seed and a nest box camera so they can watch inhabitants of one of the many bird boxes they have put up!

Amazing work kyson year 4!! 

What a brilliant way to end our first year of wilder school visits with Kyson primary school today: finding this fantastic stag beetle female in their forest school area whilst we were in there creating bug hotels. Today also saw us clearing and resetting pathways in the aptly named Buggingham palace, watering the fedge and newly planted trees, counting and measuring the habitat improvements the year has made and adding a fourth stag beetle stack to this stag hot spot.