From Honey bees to bread and butter and beyond
Jamestown Early Education and Childcare Centre responded to an appeal from West Dunbartonshire Council to assist local bee-keepers. The children brought in bags of sugar from home, to help save the bees. Each time they brought in a bag of sugar they recorded this on a chart, by colouring in a tile to match their home group colour. This made a path to the beehive (maths).

As they walked (physical) to the local library, which was the collection point for the sugar, the children chanted, “Save the bees! Save the bees!” (rhythm). Some children searched on the internet for information about the bees (technology) and some wrote to Brian, the gardener, (literacy). This led to planting flowers in the nursery which would attract bees and butterflies (science & nature). A wide variety of flowers, herbs, soft fruit and vegetables were grown in containers, as the outdoor area was all hard surfaces. The beekeeper wrote to thank the children and gave them some honeycomb (links to the community). They tasted the honey and learned a bit about its properties.

Further discussion about where food comes from, led to baking bread and making butter from cream. This year the nursery will invite the beekeeper in to tell the children if the sugar did help the bees to survive the winter. They also plan to start a mini orchard, by planting a few trees in large tubs.

Fair Trade Café project
At Longniddry Primary School, working with our community partners, we planned an Interdisciplinary approach to our topic, The Café for our Primary 1 and 2 class. We incorporated RME (Rights Respecting School), HWB (Food and Nutrition), Science (Healthy Eating), Literacy, Numeracy, Social Studies (economy and business). The skills we focused on included: Communication, investigating, team work, managing, awareness of developing world, creating, organising and evaluating.

An early exercise to compare the different agendas and priorities of Fair Trade to some other food buyers had the teacher and local minister in role as food buyers and the children as the food producers. Differences in outcomes for the producers were often summarised by the children commenting three little words, “That’s not fair".

Experiences and Activities included:
	Visit to the local Coop.
	Visit from the church minister (Fairtrade church).
	Circle Time (discussions on equality and fairness).
	Linking activities with our Eco-Schools/ Rights Respecting Schools groups.
	Taking on the roles and responsibilities within a café business.
	Advertising the Fairtrade Café.
	Hosting a café for parents – serving, handling money, thank you letters.
	Fairtrade assembly delivered by the class to the school. P1s answered questions from P7 pupils.
	Challenging pupils and parents to buy something Fairtrade as part of their weekly shop.

We now plan to use this work to set us well on our way to becoming a Fairtrade School. The concepts involved have linked very well with our Eco-Schools and Unicef Rights Respecting Schools work.