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After we had built our shelters with just our own experience and knowledge, Kate showed us how to tie some knots that our shelters would be more sturdy and stand up to the elements. Some of us were able to tie a Bowline knot 🪢

Everyone had to pitch in and help each other out to be successful in building a shelter. We learned about leadership, organisation, teamwork, compromise and problem solving. When our shelters were complete we celebrated our success and provided constructive feedback on our designs.

We had to learn to ‘wedge’, this is where you use one Y shaped branch and two (or more) straight logs to make a free standing structure as the frame of your shelter. We learned that a very important part of the process is shouting “WEDGE!!” as loud as you can 📣 it really helps!

We took advantage of the beautiful weather here in Scotland to head out on our discovery walk to our local green space. Some of the children had been here before when playing and were able to lead the way…

We took the class iPads with us on our discovery walk, this way we could document what we found in our wild place. Some people took pictures of spiders, mushrooms, leaves, logs and mysterious holes 🕳?!

We met a few obstacles along the way! But we climbed over … or scooted under to carry on exploring!

7 miles 12.30pm - 4.00pm. After a month of missed opportunities (lots of heavy rain and a birthday weekend stopped us getting out) we headed out on a warm but cloudy afternoon's walk through the woods above Ladybower reservoir. There were a lot of different trees but they were all the usual ones: Rowan, Oak, Ash, Birch, Hawthorn, Elder, Goat Willow, Holly, Horse Chestnut, Hazel, Sycamore and Beech Trees. We also saw a crab apple which we've not seen before. There was a very distinct lack of bird life. The woods were very quiet and the sounds we heard (and recorded) were all pretty much the same, meaning there wasn't even that much diversity in the few there were! We saw a type of wren on the ground (it was doing its very distinctive alarm call again!!) and a few song thrushes low down in trees but other than that there wasn't much going on. We did record something that our App suggested was a goldcrest but I'm not sure that was true! It was the same with plants, everything was very samey - not much variety at all. We did see and ID some Rose Bay Willow Herb. It was quite sad actually and interesting because I think before we started observing the wildlife on our walks we would never have noticed this - nature was just nature but now we can see where it is abundant and where it is sparse, and here it was definitely sparse.

We decided to see if we could spit nature in art at Petworth house, there was loads so we picked a few to share. 1 hour