Home-Ed children raise awareness about plastic pollution

Jennifer Dorrington has been home educating her daughter for 4 years. Recently, Jennifer set up a group for home educated children to help them with their learning.

This week, a group of home education families in Tameside are focusing on raising awareness about discarded plastic. 

Last Friday we met with Jennifer Dorrington, who led a creative session with the children at Stalybridge Library.

Jennifer explained that the project not only encourages local children to think about environmental issues, but also shows them they really can make a difference....

"The children are making a Coral Reef out of 100% plastic. Everything we're using today is plastic and we want to raise awareness to the community about plastic in our oceans because we know it's a big problem, and obviously, being the next generation we want to learn and find out how we can protect our oceans, and even little things we can do.

We've actually been on a trip to Blue Planet Aquarium, and there the children learnt about plastic in the oceans, about pollution, but also mainly about how we can do our part. How we can swap out certain things, reuse things, it's a very passionate subject for the home education community."

Jennifer said "The children visited Blue Planet and attended an educational workshop and they did amazing. and they really went into depth about how important it is about our animals and our oceans and how it's the life of our planet. They're like the breathing lungs of the planet.

And we've been learning that the children have got so passionate, so on the aquarium challenge which is run by PawPrint, one of them is to get together with your community and make a coral reef and try and get it installed somewhere.

We've got plastics from food. We've got  bags from various supermarkets. We've even got things like loofers, shampoo bottles and even tubs from Play-Doh. There's all sorts. And it just shows how much plastic we all have. And it's inspired the kids. Even my own children, they now don't want to buy Play-Doh. They want to make their own. And already they're making them steps, becoming more aware of how we basically need to look after this beautiful planet that we have"

Thanks to the team from Portland Basin Museum, who are kindly hosting the work of the children, you can see this until Friday 24th October.