My Education Week: Learning in the wildlife garden

MONDAY
One Direction don't have a song about squirrels. I wish they did, because we want to sing a song at the launch of our environmental trail on Friday. It has to be a One Direction song, because they are everybody's favourite in my class. Our teacher had the great idea that we should choose a One Direction song and change the words so that it would be about squirrels, bluebells, Queen Victoria and window architecture. We've a lot to talk about. I hope Live While We're Young is long enough to fit everything in.

On Friday hundreds of people will be coming to the school to look at all the work we’ve been doing. We have planted a wild-flower meadow with stepping stones, so we can walk through the flowers when they all bloom. Sowing the seeds was the best fun. We all found pet worms. Mine was called Harry. In fact lots of them were called Harry, so it’s going to be confusing in wormland. Wormland will have to be in our new wildlife garden, because the teacher won’t let us bring all the Harrys into the classroom.

Tomorrow we’ll be having class in the wildlife garden, if it’s not raining. I can’t wait.

TUESDAY
In our wildlife garden there are bird boxes, and blue tits are nesting there. We made it so that it would be nice for all sorts of birds, butterflies, ladybirds and other minibeasts. We put out food for the birds each day, and we planted bushes that butterflies like.

In the wildlife garden there is a long curved bench with a seat at the front, and that is where we had our history class this afternoon. A robin came along. I think he’s nesting in our garden too. We learned all about the history of our school. The house where we have our classes was once owned by William Dargan. He helped build the railway system and the National Gallery of Ireland. He was so important that Queen Victoria came to visit him and offered him a knighthood. That’s when you get to be called “sir”. He didn’t take it, though.

After history class we saw our new environmental-trail signs going into the ground. If you follow the signs and read them, you will learn all about the trees, the birds, the minibeasts, the buildings and the history at our school.

Lots of the trees are very old and were planted by people who used to live here years ago, like the holly trees and the strawberry trees. We have planted lots of other things and maybe in 100 years our signs will still be here and other children will sit in our wildlife garden and talk about all the things we planted.

I hope that robin doesn’t eat my Harry.

WEDNESDAY
We helped make a willow tunnel. The willow trees have grown in two rows, and we shaped them into a long tunnel. Straight away the Montessori children were running through them. They thought it was great fun. It looks so pretty too.

We couldn’t stay to play today, though. We had to go inside and work on our dance routine to go with our One Direction trail song. We have finished writing the lyrics. Friday is going to be great fun, especially now that I have heard a rumour about an ice-cream van.

I went home a bit late after more rehearsals. I practised my piano and did my homework. We had a worksheet on trees. We collected lots of different types of leaves from the school grounds, and we had to say what trees they were from.

My favourite tree in the whole school is the enormous beech tree that has two kinds of trees growing in one trunk, so the leaves are different on each side. I didn’t know they could do that. It’s been there for hundreds of years.

THURSDAY
Too exciting. The rumour about the ice-cream van has come true. After we show the environmental trail to all our visitors we will have a teddy bears' picnic, and an ice-cream van is coming. Our teacher says it will need to be a big van, because there will be 500 people at this picnic, and that's not even counting the teddies.

Today we had a class with a nun who has been at our school for her whole life, and she is now in her 80s. She remembers when the girls used to sleep at the school and had to leave their polished shoes out to be inspected every night. She also told us that the gardener used to be in trouble because of something he did during the Civil War. He had to hide in Mount Anville for years and years without ever leaving, even to go to the shops.

She says the nuns didn’t know he had enemies and didn’t notice that he never left. They thought he was just the gardener. He planted lots of the flowers and trees on our environmental trail. He also lived in a cottage at the bottom of the field called Shell Cottage, which is called that because it has shells stuck all over the walls, but actually they’re mostly pebbles.

FRIDAY
The school is full of people, and they are already trying out our trail and reading our signs and admiring everything we've planted. In a little while we will do our song and dance for them, and then the picnic will start.

The parents will see what we have been talking about for ages when we are going on about Siberian wallflowers, the nesting season and how to attract butterflies.

I think I’d better go and help some grown-ups find their way around our environmental trail. They’re wandering all over the place, and it’s only supposed to go in one direction.