St George's Secret Garden Project

A project working predominantly with Reception from St George's Primary School in Kidderminster, to transform a disused part of the school grounds into a 'Secret Garden', comprising a storyteller's chair, log seats, sculptures, a hobbit hole, bird boxes, and bug boxes to be used by all year groups for drama and other outside learning activities, in line with the school's Speaking and Listening priorities. Year Five pupils have been working with a team of creative professionals, including a film maker and photographer, to document the project.

The initial consultation day with Reception children took place on Wednesday 9th June. The children were able to explore possibilities for their garden through model making, photography and drawings. The children visited the garden, took photographs, drew pictures, created 3D models of their ideas through the use of collage materials and they read stories to help generate ideas. The day was a great success, the children went on to work with their 'buddies' in Year Five to help pull ideas together. The next session took place on Thursday 24th June where Year Five children worked together in the secret garden interviewing children from all years of the school to ensure that the final designs would benefit the whole school.

The children filmed the interviews themselves ready to show to their teachers. These were also shown to the whole school during an assembly earlier this month, and the pupils told about the next steps of the project.