Children at Little Adventurers Nursery will be getting stuck in to ‘Recycle Week’ with Daphne the dolphin, their new green mascot. The nursery aim for the year is to become more environmentally friendly by reducing their own carbon footprint and encouraging the children and their families to think about recycling and looking after the planet.
Ginny, the nursery manager, explains, “Teaching children about caring for the planet is part of our role as early educators and our aim is to extend this understanding to our children and get them involved. We have introduced Daphne to help us with this aim.”
Daphne comes with her own backpack, storybook and project book for the children to diary and take photos of their environmentally friendly activity. Ginny said “I hope that children and parents will be inspired by the initiative and enjoy reading the story together as well as talking and thinking about how we can all be more green.” The older children also took part in The Great Plastic Pick up earlier this year, introduced as a direct result of media coverage of the destructive effects of waste plastic in our oceans.
Health and wellbeing is very much part of the ethos at Little Adventurers; the children learn about the food cycle and sustainability by caring for and nurturing plants in their own vegetable patch in the nursery garden. This year they have grown tomatoes, runner beans and potatoes as well as herbs and flowers. The children enjoy planting, watering and caring for the crops through to the excitement of harvest time when they help prepare them for cooking or (in the case of the juicy tomatoes) simply washing and eating them with their friends.
Little Adventurers already has a healthy lifestyle mascot, Paddington, who takes it in turns to go home with the children and take part in a healthy activity; whether that’s something physically active or helping to make a healthy dinner or snack.
