The Langbos crèche has been registered for the eco-school program. The Addo Elephant National Park (SANParks) sponsored all registration expenses with Wessa. We have started with our 1st theme which is: Local and Global Issues. They will study Food security and a Healthy environment at the school under this theme. This is so appropriate, seeing that they will also start with the veggie garden this year. The learners are still very young, which means we cannot do a lot of writing, but a lot of practical work.

Langbos Pre-primary and Care Centre visited the park on the 5th of June. The visit was part of the country’s Environmental Day celebration for 2013. This celebration aimed to encourage people to become supporters of Sustainable living and promote understanding that communities (from a young age) can play an important role in environmental issues. This year’s theme was: Think.Eat.Save. This theme was aimed at stopping food waste and food loss; again this is so appropriate for the impoverished Langbos community.

The pre-primary class, which is about 17 learners, with 1 teacher and 1 assistant entered the park. Indemnity forms were filled in for the group. They were collected with our park bus at about 09h00.

The interpretive officer did a short presentation on the theme and then the bean germination experiment (this was to show learners how plants grow into food).

–  Cotton wool was wet and put it in the bottom of the jar, then the beans were dropped into the bowl and a second piece of cotton wool was put on top of the beans.

–  The bowl was covered with cling wrap; after some holes were poked in the top with a needle, after a couple of days a sprout should appear. Once the sprouts touch the cling wrap it should be taken off, when the plant grows about 5 cm’s it can be planted in the ground or a pot with soil.

They were also shown how to do composting (healthy soil for healthy food) by using organic material eg leaves and left over food.

Before they left for the Game drive, they pledged (with their pledge card) that they would think, eat and save.