Help! Ideas needed for an alternative to school leavers balloon release

[Theboldandthebeautiful1]

Our school leavers gives each child a helium filled balloon with a string to release in the church grounds at the end of the leavers service in July.

I’ve approached the headmaster about my concerns re environmental impact, danger to wildlife and whilst he is very open to an alternative suggestion, I’m struggling to find one.

Any fun ideas please? Not planting anything though..

Ducks in a stream? Caught with a net
Release them indoors? In the church.

Someone was posting about wildflower bombs

www.seedball.co.uk/content/faq

Would that count as planting something (ultimately it is) or not because they don't have to set up a place to do it?

Bubbles for everyone would mean plastic pots but with a pep talk about recycling the bottles would be less damaging than helium balloons.

Everyone could decorate (quickly, or over the weeks beforehand) a piece of bunting with their initial/something about them and someone could join them together to decorate the church? Or to put up at school after the assembly? They could staple them on, on the day?

Or at Guides we've all lit a candle from a single starting candle, then we all say an affirmation as we light our own (or they could say something about the person they are lighting from... could be v weepy, or could be awkward for some, but could be lovely!)

I was thinking seeds or plants too. Could they each plant something that children in the years below can enjoy?
Or how about the thing where each child has a paper leaf on which to write a message (or teacher writes a message about the child) then child sticks their leaf on a tree on the wall. The leaves could stay for a year then get taken down for the next year to use the space. My sister is a midwife and each baby born has a leaf with it's name etc on - the tree is painted on the wall.

Why does there have to be an alternative?

Can't the school just accept that releasing balloons is Not Good and just not do it any more? I assume it's not a tradition going back hundreds of years....? What purpose does it serve?

We used to take markers and sign each other’s shirts.

I agree though, you don’t need to do anything though.

Do schools release balloons? It's such a bad message for the children.
I agree with pastabest - why does there have to be an alternative?
I really like the idea of scattering flower seeds though.

Are we talking Y6 leavers or Y11?

When we left junior school in Y6 we each painted a brick, in our own design that had to incorporate our initials, and we all placed them on the leavers wall at the end of our assembly. It was really emotional! We were about the fifth or sixth year group that did it, and it was so lovely walking past each year and seeing the wall getting taller

They're in the process of demolishing the school now and converting the listed bits into flats. I'm not sure what's going to happen to the wall - it's still there now with about 30 years worth of leavers bricks in it. I hope they leave it as a reminder of what the building used to be, but I expect it'll go

Pastabest if I don’t come up with a decent alternative I fear the school will go ahead with a balloon release as per previous years

CaptainCallisto they’re year 6 leavers.

Some good ideas thanks.

Suggest that they have an assembly which covers the reasons why helium balloons are a bad idea (not just the immediate danger to wildlife, the waste of a valuable finite resource), maybe also other single use plastics too. And have a competition for the year 6s to come up with an environmentally friendly alternative. This should be seen as an opportunity for a positive engagement (year 6 is a great age for this) not as a negative killjoy thing.

So basically they come out of the church and then want to do something meaningful in the churchyard?

1. Bubbles
2. Light candles
3. Sing a song
4. Place pinwheels (to be collected after they leave)
5. Biodegradable confetti (to be hosed down after they leave)
6. Have everyone decorate a stone and bring it to the service. After the service everyone places their stone in a basket.

The lighting candles idea is really lovely, and very powerful emotionally, particularly if they can do it either in a darkened room, or as it is going dark. (Teachers may need to do some manoeuvring to make sure people are all next to someone they'll manage to be kind about!!)

I was pretty saddened that my DD's leaving ceremony included a balloon release... but I'm fairly sure my DS won't keep schtum on the environmental element if they do it in his year!

Is a group photo outside the church and everyone signing each others t-shirts or existing class photo not enough?

Could they all paint stones at school, maybe with a school / school-leaving themed design, make them into a little cairn in the churchyard at the beginning, have a photo with them at the end, then each holding one and take them away to hide? I mean the painted stones that people hide, find and re-hide, posting pictures on local Facebook pages (look up your area name and 'rocks' to find this, or #rocks).

There's real continuity there - an idea of coming from one place and going out into the world, while also bringing pleasure to others. Also you can track progress of your rock, if you're lucky and people post pictures and re-hide.

Or a time capsule? Photo with each holding their item before placing them in? Though the school would need somewhere to bury it.

Seed bombs are a nice idea as relatively harmless - but also ineffective. How are they dispersed? What is their target destination?

Most will land on unsuitable ground. Most of the suitable ground will already be in use - farmed, gardened, managed for public amenity, so it's just a way of spreading weeds and creating work for people (albeit extra weeding / spraying herbicide is less bad than feeding plastic to animals). More likely the flowers won't even grow, as cultivated land is too high in nutrients for wildlflowers to outcompete grass, crops or riverside nettles. They need low nutrient land, suitably managed. That sort of land e.g. in a nature reserve, or carefully managed meadow, is already full of all the nature it can support and doesn't need or benefit from any extra being added. Especially the wrong sort of extra, whcih can cause problems by displacing the naturally-occuring plants.

If there's a neglected piece of land that could benefit from having wildflowers planted on it, the right thing to do is to start there, talk to the landowner and offer to do the necessary work to make the planting effective.

I was just coming back to say something like that re wildflower seeds - a wildflower in the wrong place is a weed.

I love the wall idea, and the stones idea. You've got a bit of time.

Paper streamers are nice, and rarely used. They come in rolls, you hold a roll in front of your mouth, blow, and the middle streams out to make a lovely curly paper.

What about party poppers? They are smaller bits of plastic, and the contents are biodegradable.