Hosted by OSOS , contributed by kilcooleyns on 3 July 2023
The Kilcooley National School Forest Walk project will engage the school and local community to transform our overgrown and dangerous boundary trees into a safe forest walk and outdoor classroom. The students will learn about and help the bioiversity within the walk and disseminate the information they research during and after the project to the local community.
Martin Foran
martinfforan@kilcooleyns.onmicrosoft.com
Kilcooley National School
Loughrea
Co. Galway
Feel
Guidelines
Our school is surrounded on two sides by old native and non-native trees. In recent years some trees have fallen and broken our boundary fence. In the process of carrying out a health and safety survey in the school, it was identified as an area of concern for student and staff safety. The school was contacted by the National Electricity Network as they had identified these trees as unsafe for their power lines. Under the trees, the area was overgrown and unsightly with the children at risk of being stung when retrieving balls and toys.
At the same time there is a wonderful potential resource available that would provide students with a space to immerse themselves in nature, provide a safe walking area to help keep them healthy and give them opportunities to learn about local flora and fauna.
The students identified areas that they would be interested in - learning the names and some information about the common trees and birds that surround our school and local area. They also wanted to set up different areas of the walkway where it would be possible to sit and learn about the local environment.
Description
We have lots of trees around our school and they are not safe anymore. We would like to use this area to play in and learn about the trees, plants and animals that live there. We have lots of new laptops in our school because of the Learning from the Extremes project and we would like to use them to find out more information. We think we would be able to use QR codes to help us make that information available to everyone in the school using our Ipads and other devices.
Electricity Supply Board Networks
Parents
Tree surgeon
Barn owl project
The students and staff
Horticulturalist
Local historians
Local carpenters and other trades
Imagine
Guidelines
In order to create a space that would be safe and useful for the children we have decided to create a forest walk for them. We would involve a local horticulturlist to advise us on the best plants for the area. We want to create an outdoor classroom and imaginative play areas as well as habitats for animals. We would like to provide bird boxes and a barn owl box to attract them to our trees.
This forest walk would become part of a 0.5KM walkway around the perimeter of the school to enhance the student's activity and health. This would require help from the local community. The children were very keen to volunteer their parents to participate in clearing and preparing the walkway. We spoke about who might help us with the bigger trees and we decided together that while we didn't need lumberjacks to cut down all the trees we would need someone who could tidy them up safely.
There was a lot of discussion on what should be included in our walkway. Different classes had different ideas from having fairy doors and a story circle to using technology to research the plants, trees and animals that live there. We would like to make the information available to people using the forest walk who have a connected device. We would make the information available to the local community through links on our school website and our social media channels.
Description
We had to come up with lots of ideas to make our new walkway safe and interesting. We hope that our parents, grandparents and friends can help us out. We would like to have a walkway as that would allow us to go for walks even when all our grass is wet. We would also like to be able to sit outside when it is fine to learn about the animals and plants that live near us (we'd like to do lots of learning about other things outside too).
Create
Guidelines
The first stage was to have a survey done by the National Parks and Wildlife Service to establish which trees were dangerous and needed pruning. Permission was also sought from them to cut the trees and then a tree surgeon was be engaged to carry out the work.
Subsequently, we asked parents to cut back briars and clear under the trees. Using the felled trees and branches we created a mulch to provide the walking surface. We placed some of the cut logs at suitable points in the walk to create an outdoor classroom. It will be used for nature studies, music, science and many other activities.
This work took a lot of effort and time. It is currently Winter. In the Spring, we will engage the horticulturalist from the local garden centre to advise us on plants that will grow well in the space and encourage pollinators.
The students in the senior classes carried out internet research on the plants and animals in our forest walk. They created powerpoint presentations and documents so that they can share their information with other classes in the school.
They will create an ebook on one of our Ipads that can be used to help other students and visitors to identify those plants and animals too. We will also create QR codes for the children to access the information in the ebook and these will be placed near the relevant plants. We will put pictures of native Irish birds on some of the trees and the children will carry out research on them. We will put a QR code beside each picture so that other children can learn about them. There are already QR codes created that link to the Birdwatch Ireland website for various birds. As the children carry out their own research and create information we will replace those QR codes with links to the students' work. We will also create QR codes linked to information on animals, insects, trees and plants in our locality.
Children in the senior room will work with their parents to create birdboxes. We will invite a local charity, The Barn Owl Project, and install a Barn Owl box in one of the trees.
Description
A man came to make our old, tall trees safe. At the start the trees were very tall with big branches and they covered a huge area. When the man was finished, they were shorter and we could see lots of room under the trees. There was a lot more work to do. We asked our parents to help out with cutting the briars and nettles under the trees. They also broke up the wood that was cut down into small pieces to use on the pathway. This will stop us getting all muddy when we walk through the forest. They worked very hard to help make our wonderful walkway. There was even a digger in to help clear out some parts that were too hard with normal tools. We had to stay well back when the digger was working.
We set up different areas where we can sit down and talk with our teachers and each other. There are loads of places that we can play and we have made a long walk from one end of the forest pathway to the other.
It is winter now and we will do some planting in the spring to replace the briars and nettles with other plants. This will give the birds and insects new places to live and get food. We have been doing a lot of research about the birds in our forest area and nearby town. We found information on the internet from Birdwatch Ireland. We created QR codes linked to their pages for some of the birds we've seen at school and at the lake in town. We will put them up in our forest walk after Christmas. It will mean that all the children in school will be able to find out about these birds. By next summer we hope to have made our own information book for birds, trees and insects that we can find in and near our school. We will replace the Birdwatch Ireland information with our own then.
We will also make bird boxes to help the birds find a home in the spring. We hope this will bring lots of birds to our walk.
We love our new walkway and it will get better and better. We have called it "The Enchanted Forest"
