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One December morning, Ollie, Scoobs, Kai and Mr Nicol carefully coaxed a reindeer into a transport box and took it for a walk. They walked down through Ferry Glen, through the woods and to the Post Office in South Queensferry. Once they carefully handed the precious cargo over to the ladies in the Post Office who promised it would be looked after for the journey. The next day, the reindeer safely arrived with it's new owners, far north in the town of Wick. It's new owners sent a photo down to show he had arrived safely, and was settled into his new life. The end......

Our college course and investigation into the environment has taken us on the most remarkable of journeys and today was no exception. Our Wednesday class see's us taking part in a Hedgehog Protection Project and our experience today would help us with this while also allowing us to see the 'Utter Importance, Necessity and Value' of Hessilhead. With the help of Andy and Gaynor (Hessilhead) our first task was cleaning the temporary homes for some of their Hedghogs. While changing bedding, food and water we were amazed at amount of work that is required in caring for these beautiful creatures. When we asked Andy how Hedgehogs Hessilhead had cared for over the years and were told that literally thousands of these beautiful creatures had been saved we were taken aback and humbled by this figure. To think that once organisation can do so much good really was motivating for us all. And so we went on....

We learned so much during this visit and our thanks go out to Andy and Gaynor. We learned that these little creatures roll up into tiny little balls when they are threatened and can be active at night and during the day. We listened and learned to the noises that they made and listened to Andy as he explained why they are here and how they often need to gain weight before they are released back into the wild. The Hedgehogs at Hessilhead are closey monitored with weights being taken each day and noted on charts. We learned that they enjoy cat food due to the higher quality compared to some dog foods. We also learned that they like to eat....a lot!

With the morning over and lunch a mere memory we were lucky to be invited into the Hessilhead Animal Hospital. Wth voices lowered and eyes open Andy and Gaynor showed us the ward within the hospital building where too many injured animals were being cared for. Incubators sat softly under warm lights filled with Hedghogs, Owls, Pigeons, Birds of Prey and even Bats! Foxes lay deep in their burrows outside while seals swan in pools and warmed themselves under heat lamps. This was real learning with our minds being triggered by the sight of these vulnerable creatures who without the quick thinking of the public and the generosity and caring of the team at Hessilhead would potentially have died.

We left Hessilhead changed and the journey back was filled with soft spoken voices and questions about what we had just 'briefly' been a part of. We wondered what would happen to these creatures who are a vital part of our environment and perhaps kept the answer to this out of our minds as we headed for our own habitats! A huge thanks to Andy, Gaynor and the team at Hessilhead for allowing us a glimpse into what they do. We will be supporters of Hessilhead as we move forward in our lives and we hope that you are too.

From the Skys of Loch Winnoch to the depths of Loch Lomond we held our breaths and got ready to plunge into an other Active Learning Adventure. Today would see us visiting the Sea Life Centre at Loch Lomond. Our active learning adventure would see us jumping into active rock pools and journeying through the worlds oceans! We would see how these creatures who call the sea life centre are an essential and fascenating part of our environments and who must be cared for as we travel through our own lives.

We linked the enviromental learning that we have taken part in so far to this educational experience and realised that they things we are already doing are making a difference. We recently visited the GRREC Recycling Facility in Glasgow and realised that by recycling our plastics at home that this would go a long way to helping the animals and creatures that were staring back at us from the safety of their under water homes at Sea Life. As always we talked as we walked and through asking questions demonstarted the knowledge that we have already gained. Like all the active learning projects we have been involved in so far we realised that learning this way is ultimately fun which makes things so much easier!

Sharks and Rays swam above us as we stood sheltered and amazed below. The underwater tunnel at Seal Life really gave us an indea of what it would be like to dive deep beneath the oceans of our world. We looked on as a turtle swan lazily past and learned her story from the staff, again appreciating the need to keep plastics from our rivers and oceans due to the terrible harm that they do. We looked at sea horses galloping past and hoped to see an Octopus or two. Learners within the group asked about the clear waters and if all the oceans were like this. Our journey into the environment has been showing uis that this is sadly not always the case..