A student teacher from Cashel, Kate Wardick has helped LEAF Ireland and staff from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick plant almost 100 native trees on the college grounds.
The College has been partnering with a number of organisations and campaigns to create several Choill Bheag or small woodlands as a habitat for biodiversity and an educational and recreational resource for the whole college community to enjoy.
As part of the project student teachers have attended forest-based workshops in Coillte’s Curragh Chase Forest Park, where they were shown a variety of different ways that the outdoors can be used to educate children in all curricular areas.
Most importantly, the student teachers will be shown how to use this outdoor space to teach many other subjects, such as Gaeilge, Geography, History and Art, transforming the Choill Bheag into a Living Classroom.
An Choill Bheag is a long-term educational programme with a strong emphasis on creating the woodland and hedgerow habitats that are then studied and managed as part of a longer-term educational initiative. Mary Immaculate College is the first third-level college with a Choill Bheag.
