Earlham Primary School

At Earlham we have named our classes after common British plants and trees. We think it is important for our children to know the names of these plants and to feel a connection with the natural world. We have shared Robert Macfarlane's wonderful book The Lost Words with the children; the author was inspired to write the book when he found out that the names of some trees, birds and animals were going to be removed from a dictionary because they were no longer in common use. We learnt about our class names and each class wrote a poem to describe the plant in their class name. We talked about ways we can observe, appreciate and learn about nature in our school. We now do outdoor maths trails and science learning in our local parks, have started our own science mini-garden in school, and use our sky garden as an outdoor classroom.