Understanding the geological formation of sand and gravel deposits was the main focus of a recent visit by school children to Lafarge’s Winvoe quarry in Essex, UK but it also provided the opportunity to talk about safety.
Understanding the geological formation of sand and gravel deposits was the main focus of a recent visit by school children to Lafarge’s Winvoe quarry in Essex, UK but it also provided the opportunity to talk about safety. The 29 children from Millfields Primary School in Colchester spent the afternoon at the quarry as part of their National Curriculum studies in geology.
Winvoe manager Mike Day said, “Health and safety is of paramount importance at Lafarge so it was a good opportunity to get this message across along with the geological aspects. We are coming up to the school holidays, which is the time of year children may be tempted to play in quarries.
“The piles of sand and the big trucks may look exciting but if you are not properly trained and wearing the right clothing quarries can be very dangerous places. This a really important message that we continually need to get out to children and our sites visits are one of the best ways to do it.
“All of the pupils went away knowing that quarries aren’t playgrounds, so they learnt a valuable lesson while having a fun time.”
Day took the seven and eight year-olds on a tour of the site where they got the chance to guess the weight of the dump truck and sieve sand and gravel to see the principle of how the quarry’s processing plant works. They also stood on the weighbridge, with and without their teachers, and were tasked with a homework question to work out how much their teachers weighed.
