Educating children about the environment starts young. At least, that's what Shaun Lim, the Subject Head for National Education and Social Studies at Boon Lay Garden Primary School, believes.
The primary school has crafted a structured 6-year program to equip students with knowledge about environmental issues and also to give them an authentic "agricultural experience." To achieve this, the school has installed a set of vertical grow towers and a hydroponic farm and involves the students in tending the crops. Mothership was privileged to catch some of them in action.
Harvest
We are brought to an open courtyard in the school, where students from the Environmental Club are milling around the orange grow towers for a briefing. These 20 towers were the school's first investment into sustainable farming, and they were installed in 2021.
The towers comprise planters that are stacked in layers. These are lined with soil and there is a hollow tube in the center of each tower that contains composting materials.
The teacher in charge offers to let us try adding earthworms into the composting mixture, which we politely decline. The harvest of the day was chye sim. Soon, the students get to work with scissors, snipping off the juicy green leaves and bringing them over in bundles to a container. Once the containers are filled with chye sim, it's time to bring them into the nearby classroom for packing.
Read the entire article at Mothership