Secret Garden Project

Reception children from St George's Primary School in Kidderminster are planning to transform a disused part of the school grounds into a 'Secret Garden'. The garden will include a storyteller's chair, log seats, sculptures, a hobbit hole, bird boxes, and bug boxes, and Year Five pupils are working with creative professionals, including a filmmaker and photographer, to document the project. The Garden will be used by all year groups for drama and other outside learning activities, in line with the school's Speaking and Listening priorities.

The initial consultation day with Reception children took place on Wednesday 9th June. The children explored possibilities for their garden through model making, photography and drawing. They visited the garden, read stories to help generate ideas and created 3D models of their ideas through the use of collage materials. The day was a great success and  the children went on to work with their 'buddies' in Year Five to help pull ideas together. A second session on Thursday 24th June saw Year Five children working together in the Secret Garden, interviewing children from all year groups 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 then shown to the whole school during an assembly earlier this month, and the pupils told about the next steps of the project.

The Secret Garden will move into its next phase in 2011, with storytelling workshops on 11th and 12th January.