A Sustainable Future
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
As you all know, we love reflecting and moving forward with new ideas and visions for Poppins Day Nursery. It is for this reason that the start of a new year fills us with so much excitement! Thinking back on ventures and ideas passed and making new plans for the future. We had a fantastic year filled with so many triumphs and many ideas that have ensured our nursery is moving forward.
This year we would like to focus on supporting our next generation, staff and parents in developing life-long habits in sustainability. We all know that the climate crisis is here and we need to do all we can now to ensure we have a fighting chance in changing things for our children and theirs to come. We are in such an important and influential position as children’s educators and care givers, we feel that we must take the opportunity to teach what is integral to the survival of the earth as we know it (along with our 1,2,3’s and A,B,C’S of course). Essentially, this teaching supports the knowledge and learning of citizenship, collaboration, care, empathy and understanding as well as choices and consequences all delivered in a meaningful and real context that is crucial for our next generation!
We started some work on this last year, making small changes, most of which were office based. This year we would like to involve the children and the wider community in our fight to save our planet! Our dream is to support and model to our children how to care for our world, instilling a positive attitude towards respecting our earth that runs through them in all that they do. Most importantly we want them to understand WHY! Why we ask them to use just enough paper towels to dry their hands, or why we encourage them to use both sides of the paper to draw on. Why we have a recycling bin, and why we close the doors when it’s cold outside.
We have kicked off our learning by donating to the WWF Bush Fire Appeal. (Please be aware we will always assess the suitability of issues before discussing with the children. Some such the Australian Bush Fire, we will leave for family discussions. We will be discussing more general climate issues that we deem suitable for the maturity of our children.) We are also continuing our work in gaining the status of ‘Plastic Free Nursery’ awarded by Surfers Against Sewage.
We have lots more ideas to roll out this year. Such as seasonal ‘eco swap shops’, recycling points for non curb-side recyclables, and we would LOVE to set up a ‘Poppins Eco Shop’ run by the children, selling eco friendly washing up liquid, toothbrushes etc! Donating all profits made to environmental charities!
We will be reaching out soon so keep your eyes peeled!
Bianca Hobson BA (Hons) Early Years Education
Early Years Advisor for Poppins Day Nursery
