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The GOALS Group have completed all tasks required for their Bronze Discovery Award. We had great fun together outdoors in the sunshine this summer. We cheered up the school grounds by planting the pots up with shrubs such as Hebe and flowers such as pansies. We watered the plants every second day and deadheaded the flowers to keep them colourful. Thanks to the janitors who watered the pots over the holidays! We also made new friends with Castlemilk Gardening Club who taught us how to pot cuttings and showed us their scarily gigantic Venus Fly Trap! We made bird boxes too just in time for nesting season. We spent a lot of time in King's Park and saw the seasons change. We picked brambles in September and our teacher was stung by a wasp-it's been great fun getting outside!

This is us discovering the natural space in the woods. The woodland is called Sheldon.

A tweet in response to my last blog started a breakfast chat in our Scottish-English household about nature language today. I used the words blackberry and bramble interchangeably in the blog, as I always thought that ‘bramble’ was the Scottish equivalent of English ‘blackberry’; I use ‘bramble’ for both the bush and the fruit, but the English contingent in my house claims that ‘bramble’ is the bush, and ‘blackberry’ is the fruit – a fact which seems backed up by The Lost Words bramble spell (https://t.co/dvStuOrkBF). Before I worked at Sustrans I taught English as a foreign language for many years, and I still love language, particularly the variation in vocabulary and usage in dialects. Before #bramblegate (the breakfast one, not the ‘fashionable’ Masterchef one), the usual language discussion in our house was over my saying “so-and-so gave me into trouble”, which is ‘wrong’ in formal English, but right in the west. My husband saying he’s having a cheese batch for lunch is (apparently) right in the Midlands. Nature-wise, for me brambles are jaggy, if I lift a rock I find loads of slaters, and if I told my mum there were 40 spyugs on my bird feeders, she’d know exactly what I meant… At the weekend I went to the new Natural Selection exhibition at the Botanics, where the artist Andy Holden lists the dialectal terms given to a long-tailed tit nest (none of which I can remember four days later, but all beautifully descriptive). The exhibition also has a room full of turned wood sculptures by Geoffrey Leeson, based on the sonograms of bird songs. Having spent many hours on National Cycle Network routes across the country, trying to learn bird songs and calls, this visual representation was my favourite part. There was even one for the spyug.

It was our last session before the holidays with Primary 5/6. We were exploring through Warout woods, thinking about outdoor survival and building some shelters from natural materials. Here's a photo of a shelter in progress and some happy looking survivalists! We had a great time and can't wait to start back again!

It was our last session before the holidays with Primary 7. We were exploring through Warout woods, thinking about outdoor survival and building some shelters from natural materials. Here's a photo of one of the pupils in a nice little lean-to they built. We had a great time and can't wait to start back again!

It was our last session before the holidays with Primary 6/7. We were exploring through Warout woods, thinking about outdoor survival and building some shelters from natural materials. Here's a photo of a great A-frame shelter this group built. We had a great time and can't wait to start back again!

Drumchapel High School Discovery Group taking in the sights of Loch Lomond and exploring the landscape. They put their map and compass skills to practical use along with developing their knowledge of the national park

On Friday we went to our Local Park. We familiarised ourselves with the grounds & wild spaces. It was a lot of fun to visit the small animal enclosures and to watch the wildlife at the pond. We also used the Mission Explore booklets & made music outside with materials we found in the park. It was a lot of fun! We also walked 1000 steps mindfully, we used our senses and managed to hear a lot of birds cheeping! We also had a look around and identified areas for our litter pick & areas in which we could donate our birdboxes.