LEAP

LEAP is a group of parents and teachers at LCWPS who are interested in sustainability and reducing our impact on the Earth. We would like you to join us if you have any good ideas about how to make LCWPS a more sustainable school. Our environmental plan to date focuses on 3 key areas: the curriculum (teaching kids environmental awareness), the grounds (including our vege garden and other gardens) and the resources (our electricity, water use, waste etc).

If you are interested please contact Judy Doherty, or Elizabeth Evans on elizabethevans@aapt.net.au (Mob: 0437 951 481). LEAP is not a subentity of the P&C.

Our next LEAP meeting will be on Friday the 4^th Dec at 8 am, all parents and teachers are welcome to attend

Here are some of our projects for 2009!

We had a fantastic meeting this morning with 3 Year 11 boys from North Sydney Boys (Tim, Jaiden and Andrew) and their science teacher, Ms Fiona McCrossin. The aim was to get them to give us a better understanding of how their environment group works and how they did their own energy audit at their school. LEAP is keen to get a baseline understanding of energy use at the school and then work towards reducing energy use. This may involve changing some habits or working better with the buildings we have, or installing some renewable energy such as solar panels.

Three children from Year 5; Lachlan, Sam and Tegan attended, along with Ms Brown, Ms Mc Namara and LEAP parents.

Next week on Wed morning some Year 10 boys will come and run a brainstorming session with a small focus group from Year 5. This will focus on the kids’ ideas for helping the environment and more specifically about how to do an energy audit. The first steps are most likely to involve analysing past electricity bills for energy use in each season, plus an audit of all appliances in the school and how often they are used (including lights, fans, a/c etc).

Stay tuned as we hope to get most kids involved in the energy audit which should start before the end of the year.

Our next LEAP meeting will be on Friday the 4^th Dec at 8 am, all parents and teachers are welcome to attend and some of the North Sydney crowd will be there to discuss the upcoming steps.

Tree Day 2009 -- A fantastic success to be sure. Click to see some great pictures from the day!

CITRUS ORCHARD PLANTING: 12 orange and lemon trees have been donated and we decided that they should be planted at the back of the kindy classes. Gareth (Maintenance) and Luke (Bridget’s husband) will prepare the soil the week before with mulch (maybe free from Bunnings . Planting on the Friday 29^th May 11.15 am with K-2 classes.

THRIFTY THURSDAYS: We have set 2 dates for Thrifty Thursday. The first is the 28^th May at 2 pm where children will be told to eat lunch in their classrooms and waste will be collected for the whole class and weighed (this is a surprise!). The Landfill portion will be separated out and weighed as well (by eager parents with gloves). One week later on the 4^th June 2pm it will be repeated, but this time the kids will know and will hopefully have involved their parents in reducing waste in their lunchboxes. The class with the least landfill portion wins a prize.