The St Peter’s Girls Preparatory Grade 7s took part in a time capsule planting recently.
The morning saw each girl fill out a form with memories, their favourite things and photographs to be put in a container and buried in the school’s garden.
Candice Ellis, who was the main organiser, said the burial of the time capsule and tree planting is something no previous class at the school has ever done before, but the idea stemmed from decomposable items being planted to form the school’s Nelson Mandela tree. “Our girls were feeling like their Grade 7 year had been taken away from them, and they were really sad, so we wanted to do something with them that essentially was never done before,” she said.
She added that the indigenous Cape ash tree was planted by the learners while all their subjects focused on trees for Arbour Week and their importance. The week before the time capsule was buried, the girls learnt how to plant a tree correctly.
“The symbolism of planting the tree [is that] we’ve come from a difficult time, and with hard work during this hard time, we’ve all grown and grown so much. Each branch of the tree represents the girls as they branch out to their new high school careers, however, each branch is connected to the trunk,” Ellis explained.
Grade 7 teacher Kim Gordon said, “The initial tree planting took place earlier in September. The idea is that they will come back when they are in Grade 12 to see how much it has grown.”
Grade 7 learner Erin Osborne said the planting was something to help the Class of 2020 and bring them closer as a group while making memories. “It hasn’t been the best year for all of us, and so many people have lost people that they love,” Erin said.
“The whole event is a way of saying we should put [away] all of our memories and remember the great times we have had with each other, we put them away so that we know the memories will always be there.”
The event concluded with the girls tracing the outline of their hands on a piece of paper to be cut out. They then wrote their names and a positive word that describes them.
