Over this half term the children in Year 4 have been studying water, including what it is used for in Cholsey and in Kodumela, how to save it, move it and what may affect how it moves. Val Bolt has written this report of what they have been doing.
“I had the good fortune of talking to the Year Four children not only about the changes in Kodumela since the last visit but also our current fundraising project about learning to save and use rainwater. I took the puzzle we have made to show the parts of the project.
We started by discussing how you would need to explain to the people who will benefit from the water project how it will work. “This is a good idea but if you don’t understand it, it must be hard to do it” sums up the excellent level of understanding of these children.
We moved on to explain about harvesting rainwater from the roof using plastic sheeting to collect water – right up their street as they had already tried it, so comments included
“We’ve done it Mrs Bolt”
“It was very hard depending how you hung your sheet and what container you tried to collect, it in”
“Yeah we saved 21L,”
“We only managed 6L”
and so on ensued.
“Great. As we need 2L per day who managed to save enough over the month so provide the recommended amount?” I asked, allowing time for the maths. No one had been able to save enough water for the month, in a country with (normally!) good rainfall.
The children looked at pictures of Mamokaile School and wondered where the gutters were as they would be necessary to gather the rain water. [The gutters are lying behind the building waiting to be put up..]
Then we were ready to think about the next stage - giving the seeds and plants out. The gardeners from gardening club cottoned on quickly that you needed to show people how to save the water before giving them plants and seeds – because if you can’t water them they won’t grow or will die.
An excellent understanding of the terrain and lack of tarmac roads and soil type in Kodumela was shown. We bought back a sterilized soil sample which could be examined under a microscope - these children agreed with Harry Butcher that with a combination of sandy soil, not good enough foundations and a water tank on a high platform filling up quickly meant that it was bound to fall, as of course, the one at Mamokaile School did.
Using cement-lined trenches to move the water to irrigate crops comes next – rather than carrying the water yourself. They had recently attended an overnight residential where they had collected water from a river and moved it to where it was needed using various containers holding around 2L. No one carried it on his or her head though! They definitely agreed that some method not involving human effort would be preferential.
One of our girls would like us to try some trench gardening at gardening club next year (so look out for this …)
The fifth part of the project depicts purchasing a motorbike for the project facilitator to travel around the project area to see how things are going. They could understand that with the dirt roads this would be better than a car. There was plenty of discussion and a lot of knowledge about the possible machine Suzuki, Yamaha etc. giving a happy digression until I had to admit that no, unfortunately, I didn’t know what cc it would be!
This is the fourth year these children have been involved in Choko and it shows by the level of interest in the project and stream of good investigative questions and reasoned answers. In fact some of the children wanted to write about how important it is to save water and about their experiences of this in Cholsey in the next pack of work to be sent to Mamokaile School.”
Our thanks to Val and the others at Cholsey School and also to Barbara O’Dwyer for what she is achieving at Crowmarsh-Gifford School.
