Gardening Club

DOWN AT THE ALLOTMENT
As an over-subscribed, rated ‘Outstanding’ Academy, with 61% EAL pupils, we encourage our children to take part in a variety of different agricultural activities. Every year in spring, our pupils plant different seeds, water them and harvest them when they are ready. The younger children do gardening in the school’s grounds, but the older children have an opportunity to look after an allotment.
We use an allotment that is just a few miles away from our school and every week, weather permitting, we take a group of 6 to 8 children down to the allotment. The work includes: preparing soil, planting, weeding, watering, harvesting and of course eating own grown vegetables, depending of the season and time of year.

The Gardening Club children are taking part in many different agriculture related competitions, such as:
Growing Salads in a Pallet Competition

Pumpkin Growing Competition

Daffodils Growing Competition 2016/17

Scarecrow Competition

Every year we choose a new group of children to be part of the Gardening Club. At the start of the autumn term the group prepared the soil and planted a new set of Daffodils to be ready for the “Daffodils Growing Competition 2017/18. The children created various pieces of artwork for their entries into the “Best Daffodil Painting Competition.”
Our gardening club children were very excited to take part in the competition. All children worked extremely hard and we are happy to share our pictures with you.

We involve our pupils in a range of gardening activities, not just to cover some areas of the curriculum, but also to support their social and emotional development. We believe that gardening activities not only provide opportunities for increasing pupils’ scientific knowledge and understanding, but also to boost their confidence and self-esteem. It gives them a sense of responsibility, teaching them life skills, and fosters positive behaviour, as well as developing teamwork skills that develops the ability to work and communicate with people of different ages and backgrounds.