Students love the wool shed
A Campaign for Wool initiative has seen 33,000 students learn more about the benefits of wool – right on their doorstep. Words Sarah Perriam-Lampp.
It’s not every school that can fit their entire student body, plus the teacher, inside a shipping container, and with room to spare. For tiny Lee Stream School in rural Otago, it was easy as pie.
The moment happened during a two-week visit from Campaign for Wool New Zealand’s Wool in Schools programme, which brings a fully kitted-out container of hands-on wool education to schools around the country.
Usually, one or two weeks on site is exactly the amount of time needed for every class at a school to rotate through the container and get properly up close with the range of woollen products, activities and learning on offer to Years 1 through to 8.
At Lee Stream, where the roll stands at just 12 students, the whole school got to experience wool, and each other, all at once. The principal, Kate Martin, says because their tiny roll is “normal” for them, it hadn’t previously occurred to her that having a whole school pose inside the Wool Shed container was such a novelty. “But I don’t imagine there are too many other schools that could fit their entire roll inside a Wool in Schools container!”
The container’s arrival couldn’t have been better timed, coinciding with the start of the school’s Term 3 wool inquiry. While Lee Stream’s students already know their way around sheep and shearing, as most come from farms or lifestyle blocks, it was the journey of wool after it leaves the farm that really captured their imaginations.
“The children loved pulling out the sheepskin and draping it over each other, then grabbing the shearing handpiece and pretending to shear one another,” Kate says. As the container showcases innovative uses for strong wool – such as the fuzzy yellow outer on tennis balls – there were also signs of genuine surprise. “There were lots of ‘I didn’t know that was wool!’ moments. The kids are pretty keen for us to get some wool bandages for the first aid kit at school now.”
Campaign for Wool NZ’s Chair Ryan Cosgrove says bookings for the containers – one in the North Island and the other that travels the South Island – remain strong, but there are still plenty who have not yet reserved a timeslot to host the not-for-profit resource. “This is a valuable, entirely free experience for New Zealand schools that has already reached 33,000 young people,” says Ryan. “We drop the container off and pick it up again afterwards, and we provide the written resources to go with it too. We get great feedback from schools who relish the opportunity for a Wool in Schools visit and the valuable new knowledge the container brings.”
At Lee Stream – one of the country’s smallest schools – having the two-week visit meant more frequent learning interactions with the Wool Shed and opening up the container to the preschool community too. “It became part of our learning rather than just a one-off,” Kate continues. “We could head back to class, ask more questions, make connections and then pop back into the container again. It was really special to share the experience with our future students from the preschool and their families too.”
While the Wool Shed containers provide an immersive, mobile classroom for primary aged students, Campaign for Wool also supports early learning with a Little Wool Learners kit for ECE and Wool Kits that target secondary learners (years 9 & 10), offering extensive resources and activities that integrate wool into core subjects. Wool Dynamics is the tertiary touchpoint, where architecture and product design students learn how to utilise wool’s impressive temperature regulating and noise buffering qualities in innovative ways. “We find that young Kiwis are really interested in more sustainable ways of living, understand the damaging impact of plastic and love to imagine all the ways wool can be used, now and for many years to come,” says Ryan.
For Lee Stream, the Wool in Schools visit might spark further learning in any one of the 12 delighted students who grasped the opportunity to see, touch and talk about wool. “As a school, we’re really passionate about teaching children about the value of wool as a natural, sustainable fibre, and the container fitted in perfectly with that,” Kate says. “I’d say to any small rural school considering a Wool in Schools visit: absolutely go for it.”
To book the Wool in Schools container or enquire about availability, go to nzwool.co.nz/wool-in-schools/ or email admin@campaignforwool.co.nz
