Motiv8

During the school holidays the Sport and Health team deliver a programme of sports activities and the Outdoor Learning team help out by providing some of these sessions.

This year with the extra staff who have been employed part time we were able to offer: indoor kayaking in the Ionad Spòrs Leòdhais pool, outdoor climbing at Arnish, indoor climbing at Ionad Spòrs Leòdhais, woodland explorers in the Castle Grounds, Geocaching, survival and woodcraft skills in the Castle Grounds and trail cyle riding on the trails in the Castle Grounds.

Woodland Skills and Shelter Building

Sailing with the Scaladale Centre

Over the last three years the outdoor team have been working closely with the Scaladale Centre to deliver high quality outdoor learning in the Outer Hebrides. Part of this has been RYA level 1,2 and 3 dinghy sailing courses for young people. Sailing of the pontoons in Maraig which Marine Harvest are generous in letting us use, we use the Scaladale’s Bahai sailing boats, some of the young people who we have trained are now coming back to instruct on the courses.

Sailing in Maraig Sailing in Loch Seaforth

Even if your legs don’t work you can still sail

Inclusive Sailing

And it doesn’t matter what the weather

Torrential Rain

Working with Tong School

Tong School in the summer term of 2017 did a whole school project on outdoor learning, the team supported elements of this.

Tim provided a twighlight session to explore ‘how do I begin to soften the walls of the classroom’ with the staff.

This session led to taking several classes look at the ecosystem of the beach a short walk from the school.

The young people discovered the diversity of the ecosystem using the new resource boxes.

Another class wanted to look at fire; the local fire office came into the school to talk about fire safety, the young people particularly enjoyed seeing how a fire extinguisher worked.

Tim then came in with the fire pan for two sessions; one to reinforce the fire safety lessons and try different ways of lighting a fire and the second to cook on an open fire. The fire pan was set up under a tarp in the school grounds and the young people cooked fruit and vegetable kebabs followed by bannocks which they mixed themselves. After the session the teacher reported several of the young people had gone home made bannocks and asked for peppers with their dinner.

The English and Gaelic nurseries had a session exploring the school grounds which have a lovely stand of trees using the environmental resources boxes, with the magnifying glasses and the sample jars creating a huge amount of interest.

Particularly the large slug they found.

Flying Trip to Barra

In May the team (Isi and Tim) headed down to Barra to deliver some training and some sessions for the young people.

Castlebay, Barra

Tim did some bike training to help with the delivery of the BikeAbility scheme and some basic rescue techniques to members of Barra Watersports Club to use with their new RIB when they are teaching sailing. Isi help the teachers at deliver orienteering and with Katie’s help we took groups of young people climbing and abseiling on the newly developed site behind the old Craigston School.

Climbing behind the old Craigston School

New arrivals

As part of our work we are developing an environmental studies resource for schools to access and when we arrived in the office today the first box of sparkly new things has arrived.

The key cards are from the Field Studies Council and a fantastic resource, they are laminated as great to be used outside in all weathers.

Our plan is to have a box available for schools to borrow which will have the equipment to explore the area round the school, so there are fresh water, sea shore and moorland keys. The boxes will also have field microscopes, magnifying glasses and other sampling kit. We are happy to come out and help you run sessions and we can also organise and deliver CPD sessions in Outdoor Learning.

When the rest of the box arrives we will post more …

Exploring the water wheel building with Breasclete school

On a snowy day after the young people had visited the Creed Recycling Plant to look at how waste is managed they joined Tim. We headed out for an outdoor journey ending at the water wheel building in Stornoway Castle Grounds. After exploring the building and learning about overshot water wheels and how a head of water is created to run the wheel. We had lunch in the water wheel building. We then explored round the area ready to create a three dimensional map using the natural materials we could find, this obviously needed to include snow …

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