Glen Education Brady Road
Sustainability and Outdoor Learning at Glen Brady Road Kindergarten
By Jessica Greco, Vernessa Johnstone and Lynne Mcrackin
At Glen Brady Road kindergarten, sustainability and outdoor play is embedding into our daily practice. We believe children thrive and learn best with hands on experiences which can assist them in understanding, respecting, and taking care of the world around them. This year, the children have been heavily engaged in a wide range of sustainability practices across our beautiful outdoor environment.
The children have been actively participating in developing the many beautiful garden spaces we have at Glen Brady Road Kindergarten such the Veggie Garden. The children assisted in growing and caring for tomatoes, beans, strawberries and herbs such as rosemary and lavender in our wonderful Sensory Garden created by Vernessa Johnstone, with the help of our wonderful children. The sensory garden is calming space, where children can explore a variety of herbs through touch, taste, and smell, offering a rich sensory experience.
The children were also engaged in growing beans, which they watched grow from a tiny little seed, into wonderful large crops that the children shared with their families. These experiences support children to understand where food comes from and how to care for their environment.
One of the children’s favourite projects has been creating bug hotels. Using natural and recycled resources, the children created safe spaces to explore insects. These types of experiences allow children to grow their love for the natural world around them and encourages safe, gentle interactions with insects and bugs, a strong interest for many children at our service. To extend on the children’s rapidly growing interest in bugs we invited Holly the beekeeper to teach the children. The children were able to see a bee colony up close, and learn about bees, their purpose and life cycle.
Throughout the term, the children have also been learning to sort their food scraps, placing them into our green composting bin. From here, the children use these collected scraps to care for our very own worm farm, supporting the children’s learning of sustainability and responsibility. It was also great to see the children getting involved and using the “worm wee” to nourish our garden.
We have been fortunate to have amazing ongoing support from our local community this year.
Our wonderful VPG have been impressive in assisting the development of our outdoor spaces, especially by getting involved in our working bees, leaving our kindergarten looking refreshed and ready for the children to enjoy. The families from the kindergarten have also been generous enough to donate plants and herbs for our yard and sensory garden, which the children proudly planted in our garden. We were even lucky enough to have Bunnings support our gardening experiences, by providing a program to teach the children how to plant and care for vegetables. These partnerships with the broader community strengthen our environment and give the children a strong sense of community involvement.
All these rich experiences support the children’s understanding of caring for their environment, reducing waste, growing natural, living things, and working together as a community. We are incredibly proud of the enthusiasm the children show each day as they care for our gardens, worms, plants, and outdoor spaces. The curiosity and respect continue to grow each and every day. We look forward to exploring many more exciting environmental practices and are eager to continue the implementation of sustainability across Glen Brady Road Kindergarten.