Windsor Park School

Freddie and the Fairy

Our primary department within the school consists of 8 children ranging from primary 1 to primary 7.  All of the children are deaf and decided they would like to base our garden on the story, ‘Freddie and the Fairy’ by Julia Donaldson and Karen George.  Raising Deaf Awareness is at the forefront of everything we do, as the staff and children strive to ensure all learners have full access to the curriculum, a variety of experiences and daily communication.  This story highlights some simple strategies in an imaginative way which may be appealing to both adults and children as they share stories together.

The fairy comes to life

Starry wands

Nice day for a bath

Our garden is wildlife friendly as we have created a bug hotel, a bird bath, bird feeders and planted calendula and pansies which will attract bees and butterflies to the garden.  We also chose those flowers as they are edible, along with the potatoes, carrots and strawberries we planted.

We reused pallets, a tyre, pieces of wood from our workbench, logs, sticks and stones from the woodland area nearby.  We also reused plastic bottles and hose pipe, planters and a watering can, a pair of child sized wellies and fabric from our craft table.  A parent very kindly donated animal bedding and we reused a pair of sample hearing aids.

Learning has taken place within a range of curricular areas; literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing, technology, science and art.  Lots of the children and staff were unaware of flowering plants that were edible so that was learning for us all!  Developing speech, language and communication is a key focus within our school and the Pocket Garden created so much opportunity to develop this language as the children shared ideas, thoughts and opinions and created their garden from the original design.

We have strong links with Forth Valley Sensory Centre and were very fortunate to receive some planting and growing advice from one of the gardeners there.  We also have strong links with our neighbouring mainstream school, Bantaskin Primary and were able to ask advice from their volunteer gardener too.

When the competition has finished and our plants are ready to harvest, we plan to use our produce to cook and bake.  This will create an enterprising opportunity as we invite parents and stakeholders in to enjoy our recipes. 

We wanted our garden to help in sharing strategies for Deaf Awareness.  These strategies can be found in our QR codes, within the video presentation and also within the story which inspired our design.  We hope this message reaches lots of people as we grow and learn to communicate effectively with others.

Garden Design

Creating the garden - from design to reality