Composting and other Environmental Activities in School Yards
Giacche Verdi Bronte (GV) has finished the second phase of the children education on the topic of humus, environmental protection and biodiversity. With the involvement of its volunteers and trainees, the GV staff visits elementary and middle schools of small towns and villages around the volcano Etna and organizes playful environmental education in the school yards in order to deepen the former indoor lessons.
The main activity was the compost creation: Children filled the compost boxes, which GV and volunteers had built before, with the starting components sticks, green stuff and earth. The children learned about what to include further on, how the ready compost will enrich the soil of their vegetable school gardens, which were created by a previous EUKI project “Frutti per la Biosfera” three years ago. In those schools, which have no garden yet, GV created them on this occasion.
Two biodiversity stations explained the importance of humus for the whole life – underneath the earth and above: Earthworms and other soil organisms were shown in self made transparent boxes and brought out to touch. The life of a tree that has grown, thanks to humus, and its inhabitants was explained and connected to this topic, volunteers hung a previously built bird house in each schoolyard.
By having the lesson outside, being interactive and touching earthworms for mostly the first time in their life, the children were interested and had much fun. Nearly all of them remembered the indoor lessons very well, which took place some months ago.
In total 16 schools and 1,730 children participated in these activities.