Be the Change

This Christmas season, we’re thinking about how we can honour God’s creation by going glitter-free. The Bible teaches us in Genesis 1:31 that when God created the world, He saw that it was “very good.” As stewards of His creation, we are called to care for the earth and protect it from harm.

Why does this matter? The glitter we use in Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and decorations is made from tiny plastics called microplastics. These plastics pollute God’s oceans, rivers, and land, harming the creatures He has made. As it says in Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” When we protect the environment, we honour God and show love for all of His creation.

How can we help? In the Bible, Jesus teaches us to love our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12:31). By choosing not to use glitter, we can reduce pollution and protect not only the animals but also the people around the world who are affected by plastic pollution. This is a way of showing love and care for others, even those we may never meet.

We broke the day up into a mixed-age carousel where the children from each class came together to support each other. The day had 3 session outcomes:

Stewardship: Learn about the impact of glitter and microplastics on God’s creation and how we can be better caretakers of the earth.

Community Action: Think of practical ways to reduce glitter use in our daily lives, as an act of love and care for others.

Celebrating Christmas with Purpose: Explore how a glitter-free Christmas can still be joyful and reflect the true spirit of the season.

Throughout the day, we reflected on our Big Question:

How can choosing to go glitter-free show our love for God, for His creation, and for others?

Activity 1: Eco-Friendly Wrapping Station

We used recyclable paper to create our own, personalised wrapping paper. We used cut up potatoes and different shaped cookie cutters to create our prints! 

Activity 2: Message-Making Station

We created posters and banners with catchy slogan to encourage others in the community to go glitter free! We used sustainable materials to create our designs. 

 

Activity 3: Recycled Decorations Challenge

We created festive decorations using recycled materials like cardboard, scrap paper, and old magazines.

Community Presentation

We ended the day by inviting parents and community members to our presentation. School council created a presentation to share with parents discussing the days events, the importance of caring for the environment, and why being glitter free is important. The children wrote their own prayers to share. 

Our visitors could then spend time exploring the children's activities from the day and sharing in their learning, whilst reflecting on how caring for the environment shows our love for God.

'The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.' Genesis 2:15

Overview of Be Carbon Free 

Written by our Worship Leaders: Jack and Charlie

Be the change day is an important initiative designed to make us think about how to make our world a better, more eco-friendly place. God created out world so we need to look after it!

We started by compeleting transport sheets to find out how we all get to school. We are pretty eco-friendly, most of us walk! 30% of our carbon emissions come from transport, so we are doing well to keep that down! 

 

Oak Class shared theirs with us too, and they also walk and scoot to school most of the time which is great! They created pictures of ways they could cut their carbon:

• Turn off the taps
• Gardening with their Mums and Dads
• Turning off the lights
• Using the bus and our bikes!

Mr Webb gave us lots of information about carbon emissions, but he gave us the choice to decide what to do about it. As a class, Cedar designed our own campaign to cut carbon. Our plan was:

• Create a class pledge for how we are cutting carbon
• Create posters to encourage others to do the same
• Write to our local MP to cut carbon, using scripture and bible verses to support. We eagerly await their reply!!

At the end of the day, we shared what we had learnt with our families - we hope they have listened! 

A prayer to cut carbon:

Dear Lord

Creator of our common home,
You fill the earth and sea and sky with life
Forgive us our neglect of your creation,
The choking waste of our pollution,
The damage done by careless habits,
And our indifference to future generations.
Help us to amend our lives
To refuse more plastic if we can’t reuse it,
To lift our voice for lasting change,
And to live well and gently on the earth
To the glory of your Son, the Living Word
Through whom you made this fragile world.
Amen.

Thank you for reading, let's be carbon free! 

Our themed day this term is ‘Be Plastic Free’. The children have been encouraged to consider how they might reduce their use of single use plastics and learn how these can be a waste of the world’s limited resources and, if not recycled efficiently, cause pollution to our environment and wildlife.

Pupil Voice

We began our day reflecting on God’s gift of creation and what it means to us. We thought about how we look after gifts bought for us and came to the conclusion that we should treat our planet in the same way. It is a precious gift, a finite resource, that we must protect.

We then looked at what plastic is and why it is such a big problem.

We found out that plastic is made from oil. It is used for many things. Examples we thought of were: bottles, wrappers, glasses, the chairs we sit on and even life-saving helmets, airbags and medical supplies. However, single use plastics are a huge problem. So not all plastics are bad! The bad plastics are single use.

We looked in our lunch boxes and completed a single use plastic survey. We found that even though only 9 people had a packed lunch, there were 30 pieces of single use plastic (Mr.Webb even had some in his!)

 

Did you know that 8,000,000 tonnes of plastic are released into the sea every year? By 2050 this is set to double! So why is that a big deal? Well we have all seen Blue Planet. We all know that sea animals are suffering because of this.What we didn’t know was that plastic doesn’t just go away, it takes 4 hundred years for a plastic bottle to biodegrade.. In fact even when it does break down, it goes on to become microplastics. These are now found in fish, sea birds and more recently in our blood! We don’t know yet the full impact of this, but it can’t be good.

 

Why should we care? Aside from the Earth being a gift from god and caring for our gifts. We also found out just how important the ocean is to us. Did you know: The ocean generates 50 percent of the oxygen we need, absorbs 25 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions and captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by these emissions.

Plastic is killing our ocean. Without the ocean we would really struggle. We would have less oxygen, carbon would not be trapped and stored and temperatures will rise. Without the ocean and it’s crucial atmospheric management, Earth's maximum temperature would exceed 100°C , and the average surface temperature, which is currently around 15°C, would instead be around 50°C.

 

So what can we do? We came up with a list:

• While recycling is effective we need to be better at it. Only 9% of plastics are recycled with 33% making their way into the sea.
• We need to look for alternatives for plastic.
• Refuse plastic straws and cutlery
• Avoid excessive packaging
• Shop at farmer’s markets
• Use handkerchiefs
• Use bar soaps and shampoos
• Use reusable bags
• Be glitter free (the oceans enemy number one)
• Don’t use balloons
• Use plastic free teabags
• Reuse and upcycle.

 

In Oak Class, we discussed how plastic food wrappers are the most commonly found litter at beach cleanups, so we made our own granola bars to cut down on wrapper waste.

Plastic straws are one of the top items found, so we made our own biodegradable paper straws.

 

A prayer for plastics 

Dear Lord, 

Plastic can be fantasitic.  

If we use it right it won’t be problematic. 

Although it can hurt our friends in the seas, 

And there are things we can do to help in our families 

That can make our oceans feel better and happu 

And will also create a better life for you and me. 

But we’ll have to act quickly: 

Alone we can’t protect our seas, 

We have to work as a team. 

Amen 

Our themed day this term is 'Be Vocal'. 

'The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.'

Genesis 2:15

Pupil voice

We thought about humanity’s calling “to tend and to keep” the earth. We discussed what is means to take care of the world around us and impact of climate change. Being vocal means we have to make sure our voices are listened to.

Oak Class

In Oak Class, we thought about how to make changes that make a positive impact on the environment, such as recycling and walking and cycling to school rather than driving. We took a walk through Finstock and searched for recyling bins and cycle paths to keep us safe, but we didn't find any! 

  

We wrote letters to our local MP to ask him for recycling bins and cycle paths in Finstock as we know these would help us work towards being climate friendly. 

Cedar Class

In Cedar we examined Climate change, what it is and what is being done about it. First we watched Leonardo DiCaprio's speech to the UN, then we looked at the COP 28 summit, and the pledges made there. We looked at how it was us, the developed world, that caused this problem and what measures are now being put in place. 

We found that a lot of money has been set aside for research into cleaner moethods to generate electricity but thought more could be given to help developing coutnries reach the necessary targets.

We wrote prayers for our leaders to help them have the courage and strength tp dp what it right for the planet.

After lunch, we looked up our local MP and wrote letters to Robert Court, challenging to up his game with regards to the environment.

Presenting

At the end of the day, our worship leaders presented to the school community what we had been learning and why it was important. They shared their letters and finished with prayers for the environment they had written.