Clued-up Lochside kids save animals

Jul 8 2009 by Our Correspondent, Dumfries Standard Wednesday

CHILDREN in P4 and P5 at Lochside Primary School in Dumfries won an award for an animal encyclopedia they created after hearing about animals which were in danger.

The class won the Totally Clued Up category in the Total Green School Awards run by the Young People's Trust for the Environment.

Here one of the pupils tells the Standard how it was won: “This project started when Mrs Claus wrote to us in the middle of November 2008, to tell us about the North Pole melting. As part of our Tinsel Town project, we discovered that many animals in the North Pole were in danger. We built our own Tinsel Town and visitors made donations to our fund.

“We raised enough money to adopt a family of polar bears.

“WWF-UK sent us an adoption pack and photos. “Our family live in Svalbard Island near the North Pole.

“In our family of polar bears, there are three adults and two baby cubs. The cubs were born in December 2008, and came out of their dens for the first time in March. We decided to find out more about polar bears and why they were in danger. As we researched polar bears, we discovered that many, many animals on Earth are endangered for many different reasons.

“We decided to find out more about animals in danger, and that we each chose an animal we wanted to research.

“Beth suggested we put our projects together and we made an encylopedia. Each chapter in our encyclopedia is written by a different person, and we have shared what we have found out with each other.

“We then entered the Total Green School Awards run by the Young People’s Trust for the Environment, sending our encyclopaedia away to the judges in May.

“We were delighted this week when the Director of Total, Peter Littlewood, wrote to us to say we were the winners of the Scottish award in the Totally Clued Up category.

“He said our entry was really detailed and that we are clearly experts on our own animals. We won £500 and we are now trying to choose what we would like to spend the money on.

“Mrs Gamble has said no to William’s suggestion of a class snake unfortunately.

“We also received a certificate and will each get a prize of our own. The regional winners are now being considered for the national final.”