Our task this evening was at one of our favourite local schools, Ryvers Primary School. We have done a few tasks here over the past year mainly in their learning garden, however tonight’s task was to revamp the playground area for the Reception and Year 1 children.

What's the time Mr Wolf?

I had a slight timing issue in getting to Salt Hill on time today so our two Run Leaders Ricky and Darren took charge and led the runners to the task location. Thank you guys for stepping in today.

With Chrissy (and bump) on walk leader role today, a few of us got to the task location to meet Meera and Helen, our task owners and get our heads around the task in order. By the time the runners got there we had some kind of plan of action.

Decimals have a point

And so did Meera with the ‘if it looks like it needs to go in the skip, then it needs to go in the skip’. Fair point, Meera. Don’t think anyone was going to disobey you tonight.

So we split into four teams and undertook the following tasks:

• Lifters and shifters
• Weeders
• Sweepers
• Sorters

To be honest, I’m not sure where Chrissy took the lifters – all I saw was a bike shed (?), but I’m guessing some level of activity was happening behind there!

The weeders couldn’t quite get into the fenced off area due to the HUGE spiders…oh wait they were just leaves, but none the less, Antonio was not going to risk it. However a great job was done on clearing all the weeds growing out of the drain pipes and ground in general. Pam, as always got stuck right into her gardening task – and she looked happy from her head to her tomatoes with her efforts.

Roisin and Emma were on sweeping duty – so many bits and bobs needed sweeping and both had the right idea of ‘sweepers keepers’…although why Emma didn’t want to keep the baby dolls, I do not know!

Denise, Chrissy, Meera and Louisa were on sorting duty. A few tough decisions made on what to keep and what to skip…with Chrissy and Denise both expecting soon, we think the ‘nesting’ phase may have started a little bit too soon.

Using a broken pencil is pointless

Within 40 minutes, the whole Reception/Year 1 area had been re-vamped. What wasn’t needed was skipped, weeds were pulled, broken toys were discarded and the whole play area was swept clean.

These children are going to be bowled over with their new play area – they are going to be so bright that the teachers will have to wear shades.

Meera and Helen were wheely happy with everything we achieved today.

Next week we are back at Parvaaz helping with their garden and car park areas. It’s a short 2km each way run/walk so please do come along.