As part of our Singapore’s Green Plan, National Park Board(NParks) launched the OneMillionTrees movement to plant a million trees in Singapore by year 2030. There is on old Chinese proverb that says, “One generation plants the trees, another gets the shade” which literally and aptly describes the purpose of this nationwide effort.
In line with the tag line of Start Small Dream Big, “Not everyone can do everything, but everyone can do something”, we believe that our preschool children are able to do our part to contribute to this movement. The theme for our SSDB 2021 project is “Seeding Our Future”.
We partnered with National Park Board (NParks) to provide opportunity for our children to learn more about our rich flora and fauna. We signed up for the Playtime with Bobby and Stella programme. We used the learning materials provided for our classroom activities with our children to create awareness of biodiversity in Singapore. We had discussions on how the forest provides food and habitats for the animals.
As an extension to the programme, our children learned to germinate the seeds of local trees (provided by NParks-Community In Nature) and took care of them with their families at home.
When the seedlings have grown to about 15cm, the trees will be donated to NParks for planting at suitable locations. We also worked with the Preschool Market who provided recyclable plastic bottles for upcycling as pots to grow the seedlings.
Despite the pandemic situation, we were able to engage our parents to support the project through virtual sharing sessions to share with them the information for the project. The parents and families were able to support the children to carry out the project at home using the materials we provided. We sent home the materials which included the soil, seed, plastic bottle, plant journal, the biodiversity activity booklet, SSDB reflection journal and SSDB bucket hat.
Through this project, our children were able to: 1) learn about the local tree species and the importance of biodiversity 2) learn to care for the trees and environment 3) learn the benefits of trees 4) care for the environment through recycling
Our children and parents realized that it was not easy to germinate the seeds despite the best effort they had put in. The seeds need suitable condition and care to grow into a healthy seedling and eventually a big tree. Our children learned to appreciate nature and the need to do their part to protect the environment and the trees.
