Thank you to all who supported our work this year, You may enjoy this little film here suitable for all ages made by our Green Committee in St. Anne’s Park and launched by Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton on National Tree Week in our Junior School building in Baldoyle..
Our plantations include 300 native trees in the Senior St. Laurence NS building , 50 in the Junior building and 300 in Seagrange Park – (during the 2017 Tree Academy working with 8 other schools) as well as further planting this year in Tralee (Munster), North Sligo (Connaught) and we look forward to our Cooley Co. Louth project in the new year (Leinster but Cooley looks over Carlingford Lough which is of course, Ulster; we are in touch with schools there and look forward to joining with them in 2018 for planting projects.) The Easytreesie project has sponsored another matching thousand planted in the Global South in projects such as this Indian school project, in collaboration with Bill Liao’s great WeForest initiative. We plan 3,000 more early in the New Year in Seagrange Park, working with other local schools, details to follow. It was great for our school to come first in Ireland in the Eco-Unesco schools competition this year as well as being placed or being regional winners in many similar competitions such as SEAI, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland and Irish Aid. And thank you to Martha, the Education Officer in Fingal who sent us CASH this week in recognition of our newly-composed song below. We have put it to good use with lots of tree-themed festivity which included a presentation to our composers Dominic and Anna of a tiny Christmas tree and very large Christmas Tree Cake – everyone in Room 5 got a piece! We really enjoyed performing our Christmas Carol – the first one we are aware of to feature a Teacher and school children as the theme and inspired by the Christmas Eve photograph of the Earth Rise which launched the modern environmental movement as well as our heroes, Plant-for-the-Planet founder Felix and Nobel Peace-prize winner Wangari of the Green Belt Movement. Thanks also to Diarmuid McAree, director of Crann and former forestry inspector for Ireland, who came up with the great line, “Grow Your Share of Fresh Air” in our tune, so catchy that several teachers suggested we get it recorded! We may need to talk to our past pupil from Boyzone!
Have a Tree-mendous Holly-days.
Regards,
Orla Farrell
Green Schools Co-ordinator
An Taisce Climate Ambassador 2018 – 2019
More info on our project on www.easytreesie.weebly.com and coming soon, our new website at easytreesie.com; we are moving to WordPress to expand our reach. Tree-mendous.
Earth Rise – Verse 1
Christmas Eve, ‘68; Earth rose like a balloon.
Apollo took a selfie as it orbited the moon.
Viewed from outer space, Earth was a big surprise.
The picture helped humanity start to realise
We’ve a “Goldilocks” position, our location’s quite ideal,
Not too hot and not too cold, we round the sun just like a wheel
No sign of friendly neighbours, the only home around.
We need our planet there’s no other to be found.
(Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm,x2 **************x2)
Verse 2
Around that time in Africa, a teacher called Wangari
Planned an emerald belt of trees to stretch from sea to sea.
A little bit of action cures a lot of doom and gloom.
She asked her friends to help her, soon they’d made the desert bloom.
They grew the trees from seed, they liked to watched them grow.
Bit by bit they anchored soil and slowed the rivers’ flow.
Now instead of hungry cries their land had bees and butterflies
After thirty million trees she won a Nobel Prize!
Chorus;
So grow your share of fresh air –
Show Mother Earth you care!
Find a spot, Dig a hole –
Now we’re on a roll!
Plant a tree, 1,2,Tree –
It’s easy as can be!
Like Apollo 8 we’re on a mission, ours is easy;
1, 2, skip a few… a trillion, Easy Treesie
Verse 3
When Felix was a child at school though he was only 9
He heard the Kenyan story and he thought it very fine.
So Felix thought he’d copy her and soon he had a team
Of children round the world and now we’ve built a head of steam.
Our million German trees are working mopping up the floods,
Our forests down in Mexico fix carbon in the mud.
Around the world our tree machines pull carbon from the air
They lock it safely in their trunks they’re doing the repair!
Bridge
Earth Rise, inspires to rise to the occasion
Earth Rise calls time for our Co-operation
So Stop talking, Start planting, Stop waiting, Start acting –
Earth’s our common home, we can’t do this alone!
Easy Treesie 