Earth Day at Baringa!

Baringa proudly celebrated Earth Day on 22 April 2022. We used this day as an opportunity to educate the children about our environment and explore new and exciting ways to celebrate our Earth.

The Acacia room kept their lights off for the day and enjoyed the natural light and outdoor play. They then discussed reducing what we use at Baringa, especially in the bathroom, one push of soap and one piece of paper towel when washing hands (we know how much the children love to use soap!) The children were also given the opportunity to use rakes to clean up our outdoor space and pick up leaves, and while doing this talked about why and how we care for our environment.

To celebrate with some fun activities the children then had a nature scavenger hunt: they had small buckets with magnifying glasses, tweezers, a map and marker. They had so much fun looking at what was around them and noticing the natural elements of our play space- marking down when they found something on their map. To end the afternoon the children read some stories on the kind of animals you may find and what the land means to Indigenous peoples of Australia. How did you celebrate earth day?

A New Veggie Garden for Baringa!

Baringa is the excited recipient of a 2021 Woolworth Junior Landcare Grant! The grant will enable us to build a new vegetable garden bed in our backyard for our children to enjoy, and we are excited to work with the children to plant the veggies and care for them.

This will provide an amazing hands-on environmental learning experience for the children and a sustainable food source for our community. Thank you Woolworths and Landcare Australia!

We can’t wait to share the outcomes of our new garden with you.

Find out more about the grant program.

Earth Day at Baringa!

Baringa was proud to celebrate Earth Day on 22 April 2021. Earth Day provides an extra opportunity for us to incorporate messages about caring for our earth into our education and activities. One of the activities from this year that we are very excited about is making our own recycled paper in the Hakea Room! The children really enjoyed this experience, especially exploring the texture of the wet, mushed paper as they helped with spreading it out over the paper-making frame.

Other Earth Day activities our children participated in were building earth with play-doh, painting pictures of the earth, and a special morning tea.

We thrive on embedding this knowledge in our little people to make a better world for us all. How did you celebrate Earth Day?

Greening Baringa

We have been so excited to share with Baringa families the improvements made to our outdoor education and play space throughout 2020.

In 2021 we have plans to expand our garden, with a focus on native plants where possible. A big thank you to Sustainable Butterflies for sharing their free Greenery Guide which provides a wealth of information about safe and unsafe indoor and outdoor plants to have around children. You may find it useful at home.

As we work towards our garden expansion, we would be very grateful to anyone who has plants to donate, please contact us.

Sustainable Gifts at Baringa!

Baringa is always striving to be more sustainable, teaching the next generation of children along the way. With this in mind, we are very excited to be gifting a pre-loved book at our 2021 end of year celebration. We hope that the children love their new book as much as its previous owner and, when they are ready, they can pass it on to another boy or girl who will love it just as much.

Interested in sustainable gifts at home? Books are a gift that keep on giving and there are lots of opportunities to donate and purchase second-hand books around Canberra, including:

• Lifeline, who has recently opened "Book Lovers Lane" at the Fyshwick Markets

• Street Libraries - did you know there are 129 of these registered in the ACT!

• Your local Op Shops and the Greenshed which offer second-hand books plus so much more.

Also check out these great ideas for fun, sustainable gift wrapping.

Bottles and Cans Recycling

During 2020, Baringa jumped on board the ACT Government's Container Recycling Scheme!

We would love for the Baringa Family to bring in your empty drinking cans, juice boxes/poppers, and plastic bottles. Drop them in the tubs at our main entrance.

In addition to helping us meet our sustainability goals, money raised will go in to our centre improvement fund to help us continue to provide amazing education and play spaces for our Baringa children.

There is a separate bucket for your bottle tops - these will be donated to Lids4Kids Australia who recycle them in to prosthetic limbs for disabled children.

Thank you to our amazing Baringa Community for your support of this initiative, contributing to the recycling of 355 containers in just two months!