Today marked the final day of the enrichment program with Stoneyholme School.
Seven families and 12 children had enrolled on the Gardening Club enrichment. The gardening Club was a session for children and parents to learn how to sew vegetable seeds, plant herbs, water, and care for their plants. In this session we gathered soil in a wheel barrow, and repotted 14 tomato and 7 coriander plants. First we added soil to the larger pots, then we removed the pot of a plant and added it to the new pot with fresh soil. The children topped up the soil in the new pot. Finally we added water to make sure that the plants would be happy and nourished in their new home with fresh soil. The children were allowed to take these plants away with them to raise over the summer and benefit from the vegetables the produce. Finally, they were taught how often to water them and when to repot them, and when the tomato’s were ready to harvest.

Saturday marked the first of the wildflower walks as part of the array of themed walks on offer organised by Burnley Leisure and Culture and Newground Together’s Great Outdoors Team. Three volunteers and I started from Burnley Youth Theatre and began our walk down Netherwood Road and around the back of Rowley Lake. We stopped often so that I could identify the different wildflowers, trees, grasses, and bushes along the way. We saw a broad variety of wild flowers including, Yellow Rattle, Common Birdsfoot trefoil, bush vetch, Spear Thistle, and common knapweed; grasses like Yorkshire Fog, Crested Dogs Tail, Cocksfoot Grass, and False-Oat grass. The volunteers enjoyed the wildflower walk and we shared ideas along the way all of us coming away from the session having benefitted.   

Stoneyholme school asked that I deliver parent and child gardening club sessions. The aim of the sessions was to encourage children’s interest in gardening and raising vegetables. Through having parents attend the sessions with their children, this allowed a bonding between children and parents through these sessions with a shared learning experience. This week we were planting bell peppers seeds. We planted them in small pots for the children and parents to take away with them at the end of the session.  

Each year children from across Lancashire are invited to the SPAR School Games. The School Games is a unique opportunity to motivate and inspire millions of young people across the country to take part in more fun activity that helps young people be active and move more.
This year the offer was a fabulous Party in the Park event, which combined the traditional sport activities and opportunities, with an array of different opportunities for the children to move more outdoors. The event finished with a colour run for all participants.

With the promotion of all things outdoors. This year marked the first year it was held in Burnley, across Thompsons park and Queens Park. Each school had individual scheduled sports sessions that their students were competing in and between these sessions were opportunities for the schools to enrol and try out activities like paddle boarding, yoga, meditation, and park and play.
I ran the park and play sessions where classes would enrol with us to undertake some horticultural activities.

The activities I offered were tree planting, flower arranging, and wildflower ID’ing. Three separate schools enrolled in the activities across the day. I showed them how to safely plant trees. How to identify wildflowers, and how to arrange flowers in pots. All the kids greatly enjoyed the sessions, and I feel they got a lot from it, with one child having enjoyed the session so much she ran back to hug both me and Alexis to say thank you.  

The students of Stoneyholme Primary school were excited to get their hands dirty! Pots were handed out to each student and they took it upon themselves to fill their pots with soil and fresh compost. They then created holes to plant carrot seeds in. Each child was handed a handful of seeds which were inserted into each little hole in their soil. They then covered each hole up and watered the soil. The students were interested in the technique involved and every student got their hands dirty through grabbing handfuls of soil! We even had time to fill cups with soil and compost and add sprigs of rosemary to each one. Each child took home a pot of carrots and rosemary. Over the coming months the plants will grow large through the care of the children with their newly acquired skills.