FShome

This is the title of a new project, to last from Summer 2007 until Spring 2010. The aim is to engage our children, and the community, with global issues through building, role play, and growing our own food.
We will be:
- learning about how to reduce our environmental impact
- making connections with the wider world and our heritage, and
- learning about attempts to reduce world poverty.

To get everyone involved, as well as making it exciting and memorable, we will be building our own cob play shelter and constructing our own simulated 'slum', whilst making our own documentary of the process, and IT-based learning resources for others to use (in Welsh and English). Once completed, we will be showing visiting schools and youth clubs what we have learned. And that's just year one!

Edwardsville Youth Club will be joining in with the cob building, as well as local adult volunteers. If you would like to get your hands (and feet!) dirty, and learn how to build for yourself with just sub-soil and straw, please contact the school. You will be able to learn from experienced experts, whilst helping to provide shade and an exciting, permanent play structure for Edwardsville's children.

To help make it happen, we have been awarded a £30,000 grant from the UK Government's Department for International Development. Merthyr CBC are also providing financial and professional support, to ensure that the exciting learning experiences can be shared with all other interested schools in the Merthyr Borough. The Down to Earth Project in Swansea are providing the building skills. Glamorgan University are lending their support and expertise, as well as the Forestry Commission, Merthyr Media and Cyfanfyd.

What is cob building? Basically, it's building with what's beneath our feet - sub-soil mixed with straw. We will be making a round play shelter, big enough for a class to squeeze into, with gaps for windows and entrances, covered with a living turf roof supported by timbers harvested from the school's woodland.

But why? Cob takes very little energy to make, and can last hundreds of years (e.g. the Al Hambra palace, Spain and one of the St Fagan's farmhouses). It's a traditional Welsh building technique, which can be picked up by anyone. The children in the project will have a say in the final design. Once completed, playtimes will be far more fun, and there'll be shade from the summer sun. Everyone involved will have their assumptions about buildings around the world challenged, whilst learning how our basic need for shelter can be met whilst caring for the earth.

For more information, download the Grant application, or look at these sketches of the cob building, or contact Mrs S Davies (project manager and Year 4 teacher) or Mr Rigby (deputy head).