Continuing our medieval Elgin topic we paid a visit to Historic Scotland’s most celebrated site in Moray, Elgin Cathedral. Again, Lynda was there to show us around and to make it entertaining for the pupils and to relate to their local environment and history.

There was so much information given and the pupils were fully engaged with the history of the cathedral and all the characters associated with it.

Evaluation and personal reflection.
To fully compliment any topic it is always great to arrange local visits to bring around a context for learning that the pupils can relate to i.e. they live in Bishop’s mill, why is it called that? let’s go looking for signs ( Weirs and leats left). The fact that the pupils live so close to the Cathedral and don’t really know anything about it is something that has to be addressed. A very meaningful project in which the pupils are fully engaged and where outdoor learning has played a vital part, from walks down the High street, the local museum and now Spynie palace and Elgin Cathedral.

Hello all, had a great day out with all the P5 pupils as part of our Medieval Elgin topic and took them to Spynie Palace, just outside Elgin, run by Historic Scotland.
As part of their bikeability training we got them all (two were transported by car) on bikes and used the good cycle networks which pass right by the palace, home of the Bishops of Moray. it fitted in well with sustaianabilty and discussions we are having about eco schools also.

The journey went well and we were welcomed by Lynda from Historic Scotland, who took us back in time to storm the palace and go on a tour to find the inhabitants. It was wonderful to get a full insight from a member of staff who knows the background very well.

The pupils were very well behaved and were enthusiastic about things in the past, especially if you throw in dungeons, tortures and characters like the Wolf of Badenoch, how could you go wrong!

Evaluation and personal Reflection.
myself and Angela Mitchell, the other P5 teacher were very pleased with the morning as everything went very well. no blood , vomit or excrement so all’s good!
A bit of joined up thinking came to fruition as we got the pupils trained up in bikeability to then use this as a means to explore the local environs, get them fit and healthy and look after the planet. certainly we hit a few E’s and O’s today. having taken pupils out on bikes it is always pleasing to see the pupils grow in such a short time and to also not see cycling as an end point but merely the channel to access learning experiences and outcomes.
using Historic Scotland is always good, as pupils benefit from the experiences of the guide. looking forward to Elgin Cathedral next week.

A glorious day in the forest as we still hang on to the mini heatwave that is passing over Scotland.
Spring has certainly arrived with the trees in full blossom and looking heavenly. The last session in the woods would have benefited with a day like today and we stopped and talked about the blossoms and catkins that are in abundance ( apart from poor old Mr Oak).
No fire today but we sat around and talked about the letter we have sent to the Council, asking for permission to put up dog poo and litter posters. We have also asked if we could plant trees in the forest as part of our conservation side of the John Muir Award.
Today, we were looking at animals and their traces and how to identify them.
We started off talking about what animals were in this forest, or native of Scotland. Deer, fox, badger, hedgehog, stoat, weasel, rabbit and the birds.
How to identify?
Remains of food, remains of prey, poo, feathers and fur, habitats and nests, prints and markings.
1. First we had an ecosystem game, where pupils were young trees, deer and wolves, in different amounts. It was a tag games where the deer eat the trees and the wolves try to eat the deer. What happens when we vary the amount of each? We have extinction of various species if we don’t get it right, or manage it properly. A fun game with good points to it.
2. The pupils then went looking for glues out in the forest of any animals that have been about and then we shared some interesting findings
Scratch marks through the forest floor, probably deer looking for roots
Lots of feathers where an bird has been eaten, a wood pigeon identified by the feathers, probably a fox
Nibbled and half eaten pine cone, a squirrel.
3. tracking game. Three pupils have to move through the forest making signs with sticks, stones or chalk, showing what direction they are moving. They have five minutes and then the hunters have to track them down!
Evaluation and Personal reflection.
A wonderful time to be in the forest and after a long winter it is great to hear the birds singing and see this forest come alive. The pupils have been here since September and seen a great change. It was good to have an opportunity to talk about the trees but that is the great thing about coming out to the forest, you can find the time to pick things up you missed out before. Always flexibility!
The animal activities could be developed and looked at a bit more so the next time we come to the forest I will pick this back up and go a little further. The pupils really enjoyed today.

Today we were taking a look at the plant life around us, with the hope that spring would have sprung. Unfortunately a cold North easterly still kept the bloom in but we had a great time with what we had. How to identify trees was the discussion round the fire and the pupils came up with
1.leaves
2. Bark.
3.Shape.
4. Colour of trees
and I threw in…
5. Flowers
6. Catkins
7 Fruit.
The pupils set out with leaves identifiers and blossom and catkin charts.The activity was a partial success due to the leaves not being fully out we had to rely on old leaves but we took cuttings from the trees with the intention of opening them in class in water.
We also collected cones and discussed why Oak trees look still in winter while other trees are looking very green.
Evaluation and Personal reflection.
Again, the bite size look at one aspect of our wild space was great and easily handled. I should have kept an eye on the trees and nature and saw that this activity would have been better in 2/3 weeks from now. Still, it will be good to watch our cuttings and I promised the pupils that we would put beans in water to see then grow.

Hello Everybody.
A brilliant day was had by all on the 21st. The school celebrated John Muir day, where 3 classes, other than ourselves, were taking to the woods, 2 classes also doing the John Muir Award.The pupils were asked to come in with beards to celebrate the man’s long beard and I was touched that several did, including myself!
The weather was dry and we had a great fire to celebrate, as the weather was still a bit nippy.
1. We first sat by the fire and the pupils shared their interesting facts about John Muir. We talked about his 1000 mile journey and his love of wild spaces.
2. I read a quote that JM made about everything in the universe is connected and then asked the pupils to go up, in pairs, find a living organism ie beetle, bush and try to connect this with as many other living things in the universe. The pupils were great and with support saw connections to the sun, rain, the ground, the moon and indeed the universe. A great activity.
3. After snack and roasted marshmallows we took up the theme that JM create the first National Park in Yosemite. We talked about the importance of National Parks, our nearest park ie the Cairngorms, and then embarked on a challenge. The pupils, using string, had to map out their own national park round the special places. They could then invite friends in to see their ‘wild space’.
4. The pupils then were given some clay and had to create a wood spirit to look over their special National park.
Evaluation and Personal Reflection.
This day was a lot of fun and we were fortunate that our forest day coincided! There was a feeling of a festival and it was good to be prepared so the day had that more special meaning to the pupils. The beards went down a storm and doing some research with JM quotes ( used the special JM pack sent out to schools) made the activities more meaningful. As ever, it was all more relevant and special to the pupils, sitting round a fire and talking about JM used to do this. Always coming back to the points of sustainability, biodiversity and our role in looking after things. No better place to discuss these than sitting in a forest. i was touch by how the pupils have taken to their special places and the way they showed them off to their friends.

Today the class continued with the John Muir award . The theme was minibeasts this week but before the main activity the pupils went to their special place and sat down for a quiet time. they were asked to watch, listen, touch and smell what was around themselves. they were then asked to compose a poem, or jot down some words of how they felt. we then sat round the fire and read out there poems.
After break the pupils then split into groups and they ad to then find and identify minibeasts, they had to draw them and write down about their habitat. Discussions followed round the fire about the various families of minibeasts and the important role the detritivores have on the planet.
Evaluation and Personal Reflection.
Pupils really got a lot out of going to their special places and have ownership of them. The pupils seem really proud of their own special spot. The emotive writing and poems was very moving, especially hearing them when sitting round a fire and the pupils did really well in this. in school they then went on to write poems about minibeasts. The minibeast activity , as always, capivated the pupils and the level of enquiry was very pleasing to hear. the pupils had to tell everybody about their minibeasts and show them. it was really nice to have a short ‘blast’ at something like minibeasts instead of doing it for a term. good follow up in class also.

Today we had a small group as the rest of the class were in the choir. It was decided with this small group that we go and explore! The class are doing a project on Materials and with this, we have invited in the Elgin Museum to show the fossils found in the quarries in the woods. One quarry is named ‘Hospital quarry’ due to the stone used from it being used to build the Elgin Hospital.It would be good to locate the quarries in the forest , and even bring in our recent reading of

‘Stig of the dump’! The pupils looked at the local maps and we had a discussion about maps/ keys/ north points and scale. We located the Quarries ( 8 of them) on the maps and discovered that we did not have enough time to get to them but we would in the next term, probably a whole day adventure. We located a nearby underground reservoir on the map instead and went to find that instead.
Personal evaluation and reflection. A pity the rest of the class were not there but very valuable exercise in map work. Have to follow up but we could make this a whole topic in itself i.e., the history of the forest.

hello all, what a great day in the woods! We were joined by Coryla Jones, an NQT teacher from St Sylvester’s PS for the morning as she was interested on what goes on. Great to have her on board and really lucky she came along as the adult ratio was low that day and we needed all the adult support.
the day was devoted to maths and there was 4 main maths activities.
1. Sitting round the fire we consolidated on all the mental maths that we have been doing i.e. addition, subtraction, fractions and I digit/ 2 digit multiplication. Each pupils was given a stick and they had to write a mental problem on the stick and work out the answer and put it on the other end of the lollipop stick,. They then stuck it in the ground ,they then stood up and moved 4 round to a new position, in front of someone else’s stick. they then, in turns, read out the problem to a chosen person round the fire. A good mental warm up.
The next three activities were in rotation as the class was split into 3 groups.
2. How many prickles have holly leaves. An activity of collecting data i.e. holly leaves , and counting how many prickles an individual leaf has. ( this varies from 8 to 22!) The leaves were then displayed on a bar chart on the ground and pupils could interpret their findings . This was that the average amount of prickles is 15 – 17 prickles, but varies considerably!
3. Crate . 3 – D shapes using twigs , sticks and masking tape. The pupils had to construct a cuboid and Pyramid. We learned a lot from this activity i.e. use thin sticks , not branches! Think thin and small. The masking tape would not stick on large wet sticks.
4. Ms Jones delivered a great activity in which she got the pupils to think about non standard measuring lengths to be found in the forest ( e.g. , logs, sticks), compared with Standard units ( Metre, cm). A very good activity getting the pupils to think about their surroundings and the evolution of standard measuring units..
Personal Evaluation and reflection. A full on morning of much maths in the forest! Maybe it was too ambitious and there was a lot put in. maybe in future the 3 d activity would be better organised and may have cut the rotation down to even two activities. great to share ideas with Ms Jones and bounce around a few ideas. the bar chart worked very well and could have been developed further.

Today was another beautiful day and we have been blessed by the weather being sunny and fairly mild. Today was an extra catch up ,which was not planned, and we made the most of it and it turned out to be a very enjoyable and meaningful learning experience.
The class will be reciting’ One dark night’ by Richard Edwards at the Moray Music festival and in class we are looking at poems and poetry. We have been reading Edwards Lear’s ‘ The Quangle Wangle’s Hat’ and we discussed the poem in a forest setting i.e. crumpetty trees and heard a full reading. We all recited ‘One Dark Night’ and discussed how we are going to recite it i.e. specific parts, emphasis and rhythm. The forest school ended with a reading of Lear’s ‘ The Owl and the Pussycat’.
Interspersed within the poetry the two groups, the wolves and the bears, were asked to make up a ‘wide game’, with their own rules which they then had to tell the other pupils about. These games , ‘Forest maniacs ‘ and ‘ Running forest’ were delivered a couple of times and refined.
Personal reflection and Evaluation.
it was really good to have work to follow on from class work. The pupils were really involved with the poetry session in the classroom the previous day and it was delightful to carry it into the forest. Edward Lear’s poems lend themselves to the outdoors and it was truly moving to recite them in a sunlit, bird singing forest. The pupils were enthralled with the poems and the discussion around our choric verse recitation was extremely valuable and productive, all done sitting round a fire.
The communication skills developed between the pupils in their groups while forming their wide game was wonderful to see and listen to, but it was the ownership of the rules and the modification steps taken that really was great to see . personalisation and choice? lots of!

Today was a brilliantly sunny day and we were visited by Lynne, Amanda and Barney from the Moray based charity, Rural, Environmantal Action Project (R.E.A.P.). to deliver a ‘Little Rotters Composting and Growing Workshop’.
The workshop was delivered by Barney, Lynne & Amanda from Reaps Grow Elgin project and they helped P5C to discover the world of compost and to plant some winter hardy plants to give our school garden a head start for Spring!
We were asked to collect some ‘greens'(Teabags/fruit from the staff room or fruit snack from playtime) and ‘browns’ (cardboard, egg boxes, paper towels, shredded paper small pieces). we then looked at the existing compost heaps and found out that they were very dry and full of soil. it was decided to start again and the pupils were split up. Other groups included making wild plant bird Bombs, a mixture of soil, flour and plant seeds in which we will place in the forest next week for the birds to eat ( and disseminate!). A group planted onions, thyme and beans while bird feeders were made from pinecones and peanut butter. Finally, a litter pick was carried out, tidying up the garden and surrounding area.
Evaluation and self reflection.
It was great to have the opportunity to engage with the agency REAP and have them come into the school to work with the pupils. it is always rewarding to find a really valuable resource such as this which can help deliver issues such as sustainability and ‘global’ shopping.
It was an invaluable workshop as it brought around ownership of the garden/ compost bin/ specific beds to the pupils and gave myself confidence to become more involved in the school garden and to follow up what was started here today. I know for sure the pupils are up for it!