Primary 4/5 have been having fun at home completing their homework tasks weekly on Minibeast Hunts.  They were given a range of activities to do, encouraging them to explore the wildlife in our local environment and to appreciate it’s beauty.

Some of the children turned this into a mini topic and have spent many days and hours outdoors with their families and have been collecting photographs of their adventures and explorations.  They have had a wonderful time doing so and I must say have put in so much effort and enthusiasm. I’m very proud of them all! Thank you to all the parents and grandparents and siblings who also supported the children.

Today we were sharing our forest experience with Primary 1/2.  The activities today allowed us to explore our senses.  We made woodland animals out of clay and natural materials we found on the forest floor.  We then made woodland perfume out of some of the forest flowers and plants.

“I liked going to the woods with primary 1 children because it was more fun as there was more people there to share our time with. ” Sophie B

“I liked collecting all of the smelly things to make perfume.” Cara

“I liked experience of making my perfume which was more like an air freshener.  I’ve never done this before.” Holly

“It was really nice to see the little children’s creations as they made their animals.” Kloe

“It was good asking the Primary 1’s what they liked to do down the forest and what they would like to make.” Ryan

“I’m going to make perfume when I go home with the colourful flowers.” Sarah

“I enjoyed showing the little ones how to make the perfume.  We did it together.” Ryan

Today we were learning about fire safety as we made a BBQ in the peace garden.

“I learned how to keep a fire under control.” Julia

“I learned how to roast a marshmallow and squish it between two chocolate digestives.” Ruaridh

“I learned that you can’t just make a fire anywhere.  You must ask for permission.” Holly

“I had my first hot dog.” Sarah

“It was really cool because some of have never been camping before so it was great to be able to heat marshmallows up and see how the fire started.” Bailey

“I learned how be safe around fires.” Liam

Today we went pond dipping at the forest we recognised some of the pond creatures such as worms and tadpoles but we also found what looked like little squid.  We will research this further and find out what these were.  We identified some of the plants also e.g. bulrushes.

We also did some litter picking which weighed in at 1kg and so we’ve decided to create posters to educate people not to drop litter as a lot of the litter we picked up was cans. plastic bottles and crisp packets which don’t decompose for hundreds of years.

This week our trip to the forest was about appreciating the beauty of the outdoors. The children were taking photographs of nature. Some of the photographs here for you to appreciate also. We talked about some of the photos we took and why we thought they were beautiful.

We then found a quiet spot in the forest and each wrote a poem.  The challenge was to include personification as the children had been learning about this earlier in the day.  Again some of the poems are here for you too to appreciate.  Some children wrote Haiku’s, acrostic or rhymes.  All the children put in a lot of thought and effort into these and I was very proud of the results.

“I liked using the cameras as we don’t get a chance to do photography and it was different and I learned about all the different buttons on it.” Charley

“I liked doing the poems as we were allowed to do any poems we wanted.” Bethany

“I liked looking at all the plants and they were all beautiful in their own way.  They were all different colours and bright.” Kacey

“I liked taking the photos because there was lots of interesting things to see that I don’t normally notice.” Rosa

“I liked just focussing on the plants and flowers and see what they were really like close up as I wouldn’t usually do that.” Ellie May

“It was really nice to do stuff like photography and poetry in the forest.” Colin