Giles Brook Street Care Champions

Our current StreetCare Champions were elected last Summer Term by their classmates.  The children all wrote and presented StreetCare manifestos and were victorious at election time. 

Good Luck Champions, we know that you will do a good job! 

The Champions write:
‘We began by meeting other StreetCare Champions from other schools at the Hanson Environmental Centre.  We had a great day with lots of things to do like town planning and pond dipping’.
‘It was a good experience to meet and work with other StreetCare Champions’
‘I liked the town planning the best as it felt that you were actually planning a town and thinking about the important features’
‘The pond dipping was good because we saw lots of different creatures close up’.

In September we completed our first event, a litter pick around the perimeter of the school.

It is good to see all the Champions hard at work!!!

We found an awful lot of rubbish from cans, crisp packets and wrappers from children’s snacks to strange things like bits of clothing and an old dolls head!!  It really was worth doing as it did make the school look a lot nicer.
‘I like to make my school cleaner for the environment’ says StreetCare Champions.
‘We were disappointed by the sweet wrappers and packaging that had been abandoned by people’.  
‘All of the rubbish can be very dangerous for animals as they could get their heads stuck inside and suffocate so people need to put their rubbish in the bin’ says StreetCare Champions.

This is a picture of the StreetCare Champions when they had finished the litter pick.  Much of the rubbish found was blown onto the school site and had got caught by the fences.  A lot of rubbish was found near the bin store and we think animals may have got in and got the rubbish out late at night.  The wind could also have caused this.

In January we met to decide what particular focus the group should take for rest of the school year.  The children were all very concerned about the play parks in Tattenhoe and thought it would be a good idea to carry out a survey to see whether their worries about litter and broken equipment were true.

They devised a spreadsheet with specific questions and prepared for the event.  The children looked up a Tattenhoe map on the MK Website, printed a copy off with the parks highlighted and then planned their route.  We decided to travel by bike so that we could get around all seven play parks in Tattenhoe and complete a survey of each on one morning (we couldn’t miss too many lessons!)  We took the camera and video to record our findings.

We collected information under the following headings:

• Are there benches?
• Is the equipment safe?
• Is there litter?
• Is there graffiti?
• Are there bins?
• Is there any dog mess/are there dog bins?
• Is the area around the park safe?

This is a report of the information that we found.

Here we are recording the information on the survey.

We found this railing which had been bent at the park at the Tattenhoe Pavilion play park.  When we got back to school we went onto the StreetCare Website and reported it and it was repaired the next day.

Our message to you is ‘Think before you act’ - doing something like this could be putting other children in danger.

 

We also found a swing that had been thrown over the top of the bars several times. 
This means that no one can use it.  We thought that this was a shame as it spoilt it for
little children who just want to have fun.

 

Overall, we found many good things about the play parks in Tattenhoe.  They are safe to play in and have lots of different kinds of equipment for different ages.  They all have safety flooring on the ground to help stop accidents.  Most of them had benches and although there was not much litter about, none of them had bins.  We are going to be asking the Council about this.  We did find some dog mess at one park where there was a lot of grass but we also saw some dog bins in different places in Tattenhoe – but not near play parks.

‘Most of the things that we found were positive and only in some areas did we find negative things’ says Leon.

Thank you and ‘Play Safely’ from the StreetCare Champions