The Year 6 students at Stella Maris Primary School, Beaumaris Victoria, have continued to participate in TLfS sessions delivered by the Port Phillip EcoCentre that focused on developing leadership skills, understanding the local environment and strengthening the student’s connection to these specific sites. This years project again strengthened the links between the location of our school and its proximity to the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary. Specifically, the Year 6 leaders projects focused on improving water usage on their school grounds.

Quote from Lili & Olivia C:

“We brainstormed some possible projects with Bronnie Walsh from the Port Phillip EcoCentre to help Stella Maris save more water. We were assigned different water projects:

• Rejuvenating the bird bath to attract more birds to our school

• Rejuvenating the frog bog to create a natural environment to attract local frog species to our school

• Creating signage to make students aware that water is a precious resource

• Making storm gardens under the drinking taps to save the water wasted by the taps
• Creating planter boxes under the taps at our down oval area
• Creating a Tippy Tap to make people aware of how lucky we are to have tap water
• Installing an Irrigation System down oval to save us watering the peace garden and oval with mains water
• Repainting the planter boxes in the up oval area
• Putting water bottles in the toilet cisterns to reduce the amount of water used when the toilet is flushed

To mark the end of our water projects, we went for a local excursion to Ricketts Point. We looked at the different birds and animals that live there and ate some bush tucker. We did the CSI challenge where we learnt about biodiversity at Ricketts Point.”