Alpedrete: SEIP El Peralejo
On Sunday, we flew to Madrid with all the children. Not all the children have been on a plane before. So it was exciting! Once we landed, we went to Alpedrete where all the host families were waiting for us.
After an exciting day and night in the host families where the children stay for a week, we arrived at school on Monday. We had a warm welcome early in the morning with music (performance by the Spanishchildren with homemade music instruments, such as buckets, bottles, cans etc). We also got a schooltour. They showed us the classes, but also their schoolgarden. In the school we found several waste baskets where they separate paper, plastic and organic waste.
That’s different in our school where we only separate paper. It gave the children from Houten an awareness and they kept on saying that we should do that at our school as well.
The Dutch children gave their presentations in English to the Spanish children of the 6th grade. They introduced themselves and explained about sustainability in the Netherlands, especially in Houten.
On Thuesday we worked in the schoolgarden. They learned about the seeds, how they can ‘clean’ the garden and what can stay and what they have to remove before wintertime. They also saw a lot of caterpillars that ate all the cabbage. They collect them in a box, filled the box with cabbage and hope they will grow as a butterfly.
In the afternoon they planted seeds. They placed the seeds in old yogurt containers. They planted cauliflower, carrots and more.
The children are really enthusiastic and are making plans for doing similar activities in Holland. They would love to have a schoolgarden as well. They think it’s more difficult at our schoolyard, because it’s an open place for the community and they would be afraid that some young people will destroy all the hard work.
We immediately saw the advantages and disadvantages of open schoolyards in the Netherlands. In Spain the schoolyard is bordered by a fence.
They arranged an escape room for the 6th graders on Wednesday. They have to save planet earth by doing several tasks. The theme is Sustainability: ‘How can we save planet earth?’, because the earth has a lot of problems like diseases, earthquakes, pollution, forest fires, extinction of animals etc. It was nice that the children realized there is more going on in the world.
Sustainability is not only about separating waste but there are a lot of other subjects that are intertwined.
Thursday morning we went with the 6th graders for a walk in the mountains near Alpedrete. We had some gymnastics activities. We enjoyed the environment. We saw it is so different in Spain than it is in the Netherlands. They have a lot of mountains, rocks and it is very dry land. They told us they use the rocks for many things, but it’s sometimes difficult to grow fruits and vegetables. The children learned to keep the environment clean. In the streets there are many trash bins that separate waste.
Most children in Spain come to the school by foot. We talked with the children about nature and the impact of a walk can give you. The children gave examples of their experiences and we make them realize that having a walk or making contact with nature in some other way can be good for your health. We explained health has also a link to sustainability.
On Friday we went sightseeing in Madrid. We went with public transport. A lot of the people in Alpedrete go by train or by bus to their schools or work. We made the children aware of the impact of this to the environment. We had a nice talk about transport and the link with sustainability.
Our children noticed a lot of cultural differences but we also discussed the things that are similar. It brought us great conversations about culture and habits. Feeling home in a different country seems to be a nice experience.
