Page 70 - Phonebox Magazine March 2011

Bringing Wildlife Alive – a joint job
Sowing the seeds of
Spring at Stoke Pre-School
The children had a huge amount of fun with their fairy tales activities during February. Recreating ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ in Stoke Goldington Village Hall and making a life-size wolf from the ‘Three Little Pigs’ story were particular highlights!
During March our attention turns to Spring and the children are getting excited about planting vegetable seeds and flowers in our garden area, sowing seeds in ‘beany bags’ and planting broad beans in glass jars. We will be celebrating the Hindu festival of Holi which marks the coming of Spring, as well as creating some gorgeous display boards featuring daffodils, bunnies, eggs and chicks! Pre-School has several celebratory days to enjoy during March, with St. David’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day featuring on our calendar. The children’s Welsh and Irish dancing skills are going to be taking centre stage! We will also be celebrating World Book Day on 3rd March with the children dressing up as their favourite characters from a book and visiting Stoke Goldington First School, to join in with their special
activities that week.
We will be concentrating our efforts next month on a fun
children’s
e children’s
Easter Disco
dren’s

on Saturday
2nd April.
This will be at
Stoke
Goldington
Village Hall
from 2pm-5pm, featuring fancy dress for all the children, a disco, plenty to eat and drink plus fun activities such as a Decorated Egg Competition and Easter Hat competition. Tickets will be ₤3 per child, available from Samara King on 01908-551867. All ages welcome, so bring the children along for a fun Saturday afternoon in the run-up to Easter!
( Pre-School on: 07716-967723 for details of our setting or visit our website www.stokegoldington-preschool.co.uk

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, Then the swcouts started – ocn their
c troop nights they weeded the pond, built
a paethway round itb(Bricks were kindly donated by a local builders MBC ) using the barktheLionswhadshredded!.Theyalsoc wire brushed and painted the fence, and the display boards. Now they are busy hand
‘The pond was in a terrible d
stadte, it was full of m, uck and weed, w
we cleared the mucky waterBand closed our eyes and stepped in! (1st Olney Scout)
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1st Olney scouts have been busy. A

conversation between a governor, thet gB
cartetaker and staff has led to the start of a joint adventure at Olney Infant School. Everyone was aware of how overgrown, underused, uninspiring the pond area had become. We began to think about restoring the use of the pond and cgreating a wildlife area for all our children to enjoy.
eed de
r h Tg ge
e
t ebe wT
bo
e
srh
oe
c wcs
painting some slates (bugs and butterflies etc) to go on the fence. A great way to achieve their Scout Community Challenge badge.
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So , the governor, who is also a member of
Newport Pagnell & Olney Lions enlisted the
help of the club alongside some funds to get
videos, digital microscopes etc. into the children’s learning about the wildlife. Watch this space for news of the streamed pictures from the live web cam!
the project started.

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The Lions spent a day clearing, strimming
and shredding the undergrowth, pruning trees, cutting back bushes and generally
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tidying up the pond environment. One of the h Lions, Martin Ward (withghis companies
permission) was able to organise the use of
some much needed heavy equipment - boys and their toys!
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The original funds from the Lions have been
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used for paint, weed repellent and towards some of the new resources. But, now the story doesn’t stop there!
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Thanks to the success of a bid and further funding from The Community Wildlife e Foundation (National Lottery funded), we are able to continue the developments. The into th vision now is to restore power to the pond
into the chil area, andl incorporate the use of cameras,
l
Steve Dunning receiv ing a che q ue from Lions chairman, John Ferris.

Alongside the Lions, parent helpers and the caretaker also lent a hand.
70 Phonebox Magazine