Report by Rachel –
Michael Burke came to the school once again. He brought in various types of plants, nuts and berries and taught us all about these items. He cut open an apple, courgette and a snow berry and he showed us the seeds inside.
He then brought us outside to the garden and told us about a lot of the plants in our garden. He also picked cuttings from a few of our plants and told us how we can then grow the cutting.
We had a great time and can’t wait until he comes again.

We have been “going green” for over a year now – this has nothing to do with envy or becoming an angry large superhero though. The children have been learning about the simple steps we can all take to improve the environment.

Green-Schools is an international environmental education programme and award scheme that promotes and acknowledges long-term, whole-school action for the environment. The programme promotes environmental management and sustainable development education for schools. The approach is a combination of learning and action for improving the environments of schools and their local communities.

We invited Dr. Mary Stack of the Environmental Awareness and Research Unit of the Cork County Council to talk to the children about the importance of recycling and reducing waste. Mary gave us a storyboard outlining how long plastic remains in the environment – if it is not recycled. She spoke to the members of the school committee about the seven steps required to apply for the award and also checked the steps we have already undertaken to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Hopefully we will all become Green Superheroes here at Togher N.S.

We were delighted to welcome Michael Burke from
The Heritage Council. We learnt all about seaweed!
Here is a wonderful report written by Rachel :
Today Michael Burke came to the school. We were going to go down to the garden but sadly it was too wet. So we went to plan B. Instead he decided to bring in various types of seaweed such as sea lettuce, sea spaghetti, bladder wrack, sea kelp and more! We didn’t realize how much some seaweed is actually in our daily lives!
When it finally dried up he took 3rd-6th outside to the garden and told us the names of some of the weeds and what needed to go, plus he told us we should put the sea weed on some of our plants in the garden to help them grow.
He showed us two recipes that include seaweed Laminaria soup and carrageen moss blancmange.

We have been looking at the chrysalides  for the last two weeks in their secure hatching habitat with super clear mesh for easy viewing.  The  transformation for the past month has been amazing.

This morning we were amazed to see two butterflies.  This evening we had a total of six!    We placed nectar and some flowers in the habitat and we look forward to releasing them tomorrow.

Sites to show our progress since May :

https://togher.edublogs.org/2016/05/09/butterfly-garden/

https://togher.edublogs.org/2016/05/16/caterpillar-progress/