Halmhuset - A sustainable experimentarium
Halmhuset - The Straw House - is a universe where school students can experiment with innovative ideas and help find solutions to the climate and environmental challenges facing the world today and in the future.
The Straw House was built in 2015 by Odense Food Community and was originally located on Vilhelm Werners Plads, but in 2016 it was moved to Østre Plads where it is now located. The house is built from environmentally friendly and sustainable materials, including straw, hence the name. The purpose of the house is to provide a framework for various learning activities for children and young people and offers classes for 5th-6th graders in food and self-sufficiency, plastics and the marine environment, clothing and consumption, and recycling and upcycling.
Innovation and sustainability on the curriculum
Climate and environmental challenges are an inevitable premise of the society we live in today. Therefore, it is also important that our children and young people are equipped to understand and work with sustainability so that we can take joint responsibility and work together towards the SDGs.
Therefore, the Straw House is an obvious learning environment, as it is in itself a sustainable eternal project. The house is also the setting for the elective subject "Innovation and Sustainability", where students get to work with actual and concrete themes within innovation and sustainability.
Canoe trips and recycling
Anders and Susan, both teachers at Halmhuset, are both passionate about the sustainable project and emphasise that learning comes from the children using their hands and seeing things with their own eyes. Among other things, they spend energy teaching the children about recycling, growing their own vegetables and the latest project has been canoe trips on the Odense River to collect rubbish.
After the outbreak of Covid-19, they had to think creatively in relation to learning, and in this connection, 14 alternative teaching programmes were run, where different school classes from Odense, among other things, had to go canoeing and collect rubbish in the river Odense Å. The great effort resulted in more than 2.6 tonnes of collected rubbish.
The house thus provides the setting for various projects that contribute to finding solutions to climate and environmental challenges and teach children about how to promote sustainability in everyday life.