Our first green flag in RETNS was awarded in 2005 for our efforts at recycling and reducing the amount of rubbish going from the school into landfill. As a recipient of any green flag we believe in continuing our commitment to its aims, while continuing to work towards our next flag. Our belief in recycling as much as possible in-school has extended to recycling projects in which we use recycled materials in our art work or to create something new. One such project was our famous dinosaur, Bloomosaurus, made entirely from recycled materials, which was proudly dispatched to Bloom last June and which has just been returned to the school. Each year we take part in the DLR recycled Christmas decoration competition while at other times during the year classes dip into our store of recycled materials to see if they can find what they need rather than using new materials. We constantly replenish our store from the ReCreate centre in Ballymount.
Recycling Projects range from individual origami animals to a shared large-scale project between two classes, with the aid of parents. In addition, many staff members, teachers and SNAs, have attended workshops in ReCreate, to work with creative artists in learning how to make the most of recycled materials or how to use art specific mediums paired with materials from ReCreate.
Recently our school has been selected to receive an art Toolkit from Recreate. The kit is made up from unwanted material from industry and other sources. These kits have been funded via the LA21 Environment Protection Fund and are being offered for free to select DLR schools.
We are looking forward to receiving the kit and to seeing what our very creative children will produce!
Some of our pupils described how we made our dinosaur from recycled materials.
Our class was chosen to make a dinosaur project for Bloom. Some other schools made dinosaurs too. We had a brainstorm and came up with the idea to use a chair as the base for the dinosaur. Anne went to Re-create to get some materials for the dinosaur.
Some parents came in to help us. We made a newspaper ball for the body and used masking tape to stick it together. Afterwards we took the wooden bit off the back of the chair. We pierced coffee cups and stuck them on the chair legs to make the legs bigger. Then we got a big chunk of aero board for the base of body and we attached the newspaper ball onto the aero board. We got a long cuboid of aero board and stuck it on the back of the chair to create the dinosaur’s neck. A few children stuck cocktail sticks into the neck and then attached another chunk of aero board on for the head. We made the tail with coffee cups and stuck it on to the dinosaur. Next we made the eyes with tennis balls. After that we created nostrils by cutting a used masking tape roll in half. We covered the whole thing with chicken wire and layered it with plaster bandages. When it dried we strengthened it with more plaster. Then we decided what colour to paint it. We chose to paint the base colour red. We then blended it into orange lower down on the dinosaur’s body. Finally we painted the eyes and mouth.
We were delighted with the finished product. The dinosaur even got to enjoy a few days of music week in R.E.T.N.S.!
Sorcha and Michelle, now 5th class.
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