The Baynhams

Every now and again our school has a "Clean Up Day" where families are invited to spend a few hours mucking in with wheelbarrows and general gardening skills to blitz the school grounds. This is usually in advance of a school event. This month our school was having an official ceremony to mark the opening of the new school hall and so we went along last weekend to join in the spring clean. The younger kids normally just run around under everyone's feet and try to avoid any manual labour. This clean up was no exception!

Recently the school used some fundraising money to install a fabulous new adventure playground. The kids love it but it is strictly controlled and only accessed on a roster under teachers supervision during the school day. I asked the principal if I could let the kids burn off a bit of steam on it if I watched over them. He agreed and so we ran through the bush behind the school to where the playground has been installed. It was such a novelty for me to see it in use and for the kids to use it in a less crowded environment. Normally there would be a whole class queuing for a turn but today they just scrambled all over with lots of space to do whatever they liked!

As for the other grown ups. They did a great job wheel-barrowing a mountain of mulch and tearing out and replacing retaining walls while the kids went mad climbing and sliding and generally having fun and I took photos.

It was a hard job but someone had to do it....!