After the luck we had with the weather for our Mini Walk last week, we didn’t expect to be as fortunate this week for our trip to Logan Gardens but thankfully we were so, very wrong!! 🌞 We hopped on the bus just after 9am with our sun, hats, sunglasses, t-shirts and shorts arriving at the beautiful Logan Gardens with the sun shining in the sky! 😎
We ate our snacks in the walled garden and shortly after were met by the two rangers. Primary 1-4 were bursting with excitement to find out what the mysterious title “The Secrets of Trees” entailed. Before the boys and girls could get anywhere near the trees to ask them ourselves we took a short jaunt through the gardens where we stopped to find out about the inner workings of these amazing plants. We created a human representation of a tree, complete with its trunk, roots, xylem, phloem and bark – finding out about all of the important jobs they do! We learned about how trees get food from sunlight and how trees can create food. It was only right that we tasted some of the tree sap.. please do not be alarmed there was no licking that occurred.. instead we tasted some Maple syrup from a bottle (a cleaner and tastier alterative I think).🌲🍁😂
We then walked around using our senses to describe the roots and bark of trees which have originated all around the world – we were very impressed by the bag and shoes made completely out of tree bark. Unfortunately, Mrs MacPherson was very disappointed to hear these were not for sale in the gift shop! 👜
We then carried on our journey after looking at the bottom of the tree and the middle to look at the leaves of the tree. Using a mirror we looked up at the different shapes and variations of leaves in the sky before finding our own special leaves and discussed what made them unique.🍃🚶♀️
We finished off our workshop by using natural materials from the gardens to create a picture (complete with a frame) to represent the different parts of the tree – this was a lot of fun!
P5-7 were also busy on their “mapping our World” – we started by talking about the purpose of maps and the different kinds that we use in our lives. We created our own compasses using natural materials as well as a small-scale map of our surroundings – these looked very cool! 🗺 📌
After that we made a sound map; the boys and girls closed their eyes and using only their sense of hearing, mapped out themselves and the sounds they could hear in relation to where they were on their own little maps. Things they heard included: birds singing, leaves rustling, branches moving, the wind whistling.. and randomly the sound of African drumming (which did make for some peaceful listening when we retuned briefly to the walled garden for our lunch)! 👂
A huge thank you to the team from Logan Gardens for making our visit as fun and enjoyable as it was 🙂
