LEAP Frog Food and Art Garden

Two parents at Lambton Public School have been making a difference to the environment and educating kids in the process

In 2009 Cathy and Graeme helped the school obtain $4500 from the NRMA for the Lambton Environment Awareness Program.

The centre piece of the program has been the LEAP Frog Food and Art Garden. Through a number of working bees, three large garden beds (in the shape of LPS) and a few smaller beds (e.g., in car tyres or planting boxes) were established.

There has been mixed success in growing things, but produce from the garden is regularly sold at an after-school market stall. For three terms last year there was a garden club after school where a small group of students spent an hour in the garden with some parents.

As part of LEAP Frog, a number of holiday craft workshops have been held. The most successful involved over 80 students and parents making mosaic pavers for the garden. Other workshops have included making Recycled Robots out of materials that would have otherwise ended up in landfill and Rags to Riches where old clothes or material were recreated into something new.

Cathy and Graeme had hoped that teachers would use the garden more as an outdoor learning resource and, while this has occasionally happened, there is potential to expand this aspect. As with many gardens, the work has fallen largely on a small group of people and the next challenge is how to engender a greater sense of ownership throughout the school.

Cathy, a home sustainability assessor, has also been working with students on an energy audit. Watt Watchers involved 24 gifted and talented students (GATS) undertaking a detailed energy audit under Cathy’s guidance. The aims of Watt Watchers were to:

1. Reduce the energy consumption of the school
2. Improve educational outcomes for students involved in the GATS program by incorporating real world experience
3. Increase the energy literacy of students.

By involving the students in the process, Cathy hopes that the school will be more committed to implementing change. While energy audits have been undertaken in numerous schools, Watt Watchers incorporated the audit as part of a GATS program. Students have participated in a wide range of activities including measuring the energy use of all equipment in the school (by using plug in power metres); measuring lighting in classrooms and comparing the results to Australian Standards; interviewing staff about their use of equipment; conducting a survey exploring the ease of turning off equipment; and monitoring usage through web graphs.

The potential for reducing energy usage was demonstrated by a power down when all nonessential equipment was turned off over the June 2010 long weekend. Energy was reduced by over 50% from an average of 120kWh/day to 59, demonstrating the school can dramatically reduce its energy costs and emissions by switching off at the powerpoint.

The energy audit is taking much longer than Cathy expected, but students have become more aware of how we use energy. Watt Watchers have present some of their findings to the Paretns and Citizens Association, and Cathy gave an inservice to teachers based on the audit. The Watt Watchers contributed  to the school winning four awards at the 2010 ClimateCam awards including the ClimateCam Primary School of the Year and the Parent Helper of the Year. The next steps are to finish compiling the data and to encourage the school to make an ongoing commitment to monitoring and reducing their energy use.

For more details contact Cathy and Graeme on 4953 9422.