On the 24th and the 25th of January 2018 5th and 6th did a “Leave No Trace” workshop, about the environment. A man called Padraig came into us from the “Leave No Trace” company.

We learned a lot about nature and animals and how to stop litter and waste. We learned about this by playing games like the ‘A-Z of nature’ game, doing a scavenger hunt and the ‘Food Chain’ game.

We also did a quiz on litter and how long it takes to decompose. For example we learned from the quiz that a glass bottle will never decompose, a crisp packet will take 80 years to decompose and a nappy will take 450 years to decompose! A baby will use up to 6000 nappies on average so that means your nappies are still somewhere in a landfill.

We learned in our quiz that the only living animal that begins with the letter X is the X-ray fish! We found out that there is a floating rubbish pile in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas! No one really knows what to do with it because it’s so big it would be nearly impossible to move.

We learned that the Rowan tree very rarely gets struck by lightning due to how small it is and its tendency to grow beside other, taller trees. There was a myth made up about it and its connections with Thor, an ancient god.

We also learned about how everyone enjoys different parts of nature, and how if even one species of animal went extinct, everything could. We found out from the food chain game, that the sun is the most powerful thing in the universe and when, say for example, all the  of crows die that whatever hunts crows will eventually die and so on and so on.    

This workshop was very fun and we would like to thank Padraig for giving up his time for a whole two days to teach us about leaving no trace.

By Lucy Bracken and Eve O’Callaghan from 5th class