Wheatley C of E Primary School, Wheatley

Rose Gorman, artist and photographer, has taken the notion of the carbon footprint quite literally as the children of Wheatley primary painted feet onto silk and worked with Rose to think about how they would like to look after the planet.

Rose and the children talked about what mattered to them, what made the world beautiful and what they would like to save and an array of designs are decorating the footprints from stars and people to football and flowers.  The silk screen will be displayed on an elaborate contraption which enables people to turn the handle and make the screen move and the footsteps walk.

The piece will be enhanced by a soundscape the children have created, carefully recording one anothers voices as they talked about their inspiration and what they have done. 

A pupil building a solar powered oven to melt chocolate.

Janet Payne’s arrival at Wheatley C of E Primary School caused rather a stir as the brightly coloured Energy Bus pulled up outside the main entrance of the school. Kitted out with wind turbines, solar panels and a whole host of other energy saving gizmos, the children piled up at the windows of their classroom to get a glimpse of the Bus.

The science workshop started with a short presentation by Janet about the various types of energy that we use and how renewable technologies are being used to combat climate change.

Using some of this information they were each set the challenge of building solar powered ovens with pizza boxes, foil, black paper, newspaper and cling film. The end result could be used to melt chocolate! The pupils took great care in following Janet’s instructions whilst she described the scientific principles behind their solar ovens at various intervals.

In the final part of their science workshops the pupils were given a guided tour of the Energy Bus in small groups. The interactive bus enabled Janet to demonstrate the difference between energy saving bulbs and standard bulbs, in fact with the energy it takes to light one standard bulb you can light up to five energy saving bulbs! The children also used pedal power to generate the energy to power a radio, which was the cause of much laughter!