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Pupils at St Matthew's Academy made a great start to their John Muir Award last week. We explored the school's Wild Space, located an area we will be working on, decorated a plant pot and planted seeds that will be looked after in the school's own greenhouse.

The group at St Matthew's worked with Harry and Lynsey from the Scottish Wildlife Trust to explore the different trees within the school grounds.

Walk in the woods identifying mushrooms

Today we chose the best location in the woods and cleared the ground and started to build our fire circle. We have decided to build a brick surround around our washing machine drum fire pit. We are exciting to get it finished so we can get cooking.. one of our group is particularly looking forward to a cup of coffee on a cold day.

Today was our first try with fire strikes.. everyone lit there cotton wool and we celebrated with cups of tea and coffee. We are really looking forward to all the activities we can do around our new fire circle.

Noah’s Arcs is a 4 acre animal sanctuary/smallholding. There are 11 Shetland sheep (all named), Barnabas a Large White pig, 6 hens (naned). Noah and Joshua (French sheepdogs) help to look after them all. Our task at Noah’s Arcs is to monitor and record the wildlife (plants, birds, insects, animals) which lives here; to plant new native hedging and native saplings, and look after what exists already; to learn how to look after the farm animals who live on the sanctuary.

I like them all. The white hen is Phoebe, and the brown hens are Mary, Anna, Joanna and Ruth. written by Mackenzie

Barnabas is six years old. He was rescued by the RSPCA and has lived at Noah’s Arcs for three years. I like him because he is a cute pig. He enjoys lying in his mud-bath. written by Rhys