Children at Dargavel Primary have been busy painting bird boxes as part of a sustainability challenge to encourage more wildlife into private gardens.
As part of the project, our local sustainability champion, Joseph Green, visited Dargavel Primary to explain more about our sustainability efforts, such as bee bricks, bird boxes, bug hotels and hedgehog highways at developments across the west of Scotland, including Dargavel Village, Bishopton.
Joseph also chose his favourite three designs before the children put their bird boxes up for sale as part of their enterprise activities to help fund their Primary 7 residential trip and leavers’ dance. It’s hoped that all 55 bird boxes painted by the children in the challenge will find new homes in gardens across the local area.
We supplied Dargavel Primary with all the materials needed for the project, and both Primary 7 classes took part. Every child also received an Ecotastic Activity book, which is designed to help children learn fun facts about the environment while also discovering some interesting ways that we are making our new homes and developments more sustainable.
Our sustainability champion, Joseph Green, said: “We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to work with local communities near our developments, so we were delighted when Primary 7 at Dargavel Primary agreed to participate in our bird box painting competition. We understand the children enjoyed working on this project, and they are looking forward to launching the bird boxes for sale to generate some revenue for their enterprise efforts to fund their residential trip and their Leavers’ event.”
Louise Chisholm, Depute Head Teacher at Dargavel Primary, added: “We were delighted to be asked to participate in Taylor Wimpey West Scotland’s bird box painting competition. The children had great fun creating the designs for and painting their bird boxes.
“Of course, Primary 7 is very excited to now have the opportunity to sell its bird boxes as part of its enterprise activities, and I am happy this project has offered our children a variety of learning opportunities and experiences, including a great talk from Joseph at Taylor Wimpey who also gave the children an insight into his world of work.
“We were also delighted to be gifted with a nature pack from Taylor Wimpey that we will use in our school garden – which is great news for our local wildlife.”
Community group Dargavel Wildlife, supported by us, launched its first Junior Wildlife Photography competition.
With prizes across for junior and senior age categories – the brief was simple! Go out into nature and take photos of the fantastic local wildlife. The judging took place recently at our Dargavel Village development, Bishopton with prizes awarded for the winner in each category, as well as runner-up and ‘notable’ entries in each group.
Dargavel Wildlife is a group of local people generally living within the growing community at Dargavel Village, Bishopton who are enthusiastic about the wonderful nature found on the doorstep of this impressive development in Renfrewshire.