Students get their hands dirty to learn from Landcare group

Cobar Public School Year 4 students got a dirty, hands-on, fun experience at a Landcare workshop at the school last week using a stream table, which models what happens to water flow in our landscape. The table was the clever idea of one of the Buckwaroon Landcare Group members, Robert Chambers. Photo contributed

Year 4 students at Cobar Public School got the chance to get their hands dirty when they took part in a Landcare workshop at the school last Thursday.

The interactive workshop, which helped students learn about soils, was coordinated by Cobar’s Landcare Coordinator Jasmine Whitten with members from the local Buckwaroon Landcare Group and Local Land Services staff also taking part.

“It helped the students to learn all about soils which is the number one resource on our farms.

“If we have healthy soils, we have
healthy farms, it’s a flow-on process,” Jasmine said.

“This experience reiterated the importance that as farmers we have to care for our soils.”

Jasmine said all of the Buckwaroon members are farmers themselves and were able to share their knowledge, expertise and farming methods with the group of 23 students.

The workshop was supported by Local Land Services, and funded by the Australian Government National Landcare Program.

“To have something so interactive and hands on was great, I just think it took their learning to the next level.

“Everyone was so engaged and I believe it was the talking topic of the kids all lunchtime,” Jasmine reported.

She said the workshop really got the students thinking.

“I think it gobsmacked kids to find out that there are so many living things in just a handful of soil, more than the number of humans that we have on the earth.”

She said the purpose of the workshop was to briefly show the students how we care for our land and hopefully to get them interested and talking about Landcare.

Jasmine said they will be holding another Landcare day at St John’s School for their Year 4 students in May.

She said this workshop is a good “add-on” to the Buckwaroon Landcare Groups annual event at the schools which targets students in Year 5 and Year 6.