Outdoor Learning at Grangemouth High

Today we were out and about at a local park, Muiravonside. The park has a blend of ‘maintained’ woodland and ‘light touch’ woods. This allows for a wild feel and some good areas for learning in. I have used it for S1 in june when we had a fantastic IDL day with a blend of Bushcraft/Technology and Food/HE using a BBQ. 

 The picture here shows the class making there way up through the mature decidious softwoods past the river.

 We had looked at the sand at the river bank and explored where the sand came from and how the river has eroded the land into a small gorge. This was only after a  pupil asked why there was a sandy beach no where near the sea.

We also looked at the Limekilns, an older way of creating fertilizers, now we have the big Petro Chemical plants in Grangemouth creating fertilizers.

We asecended the stairs to the top of park and the Aqueduct for the Union canal. The weir is quite impressive to see from above. Pupils were surprised how narrow the canal is on the aqueduct and how strong the structure must be. I expalined how the weir worked for holding back water.   

 The tree canopy is quite open now we are entering winter.  

The class now moved up to the farm, surprised that these were actually real turkeys, ‘their massive !’.

One pupil was keen to access any work experience, at the farm. Luckily, the worker there had done work experience and now works full time. So hopefully this could be a positive transition.

The farm has pigs, cattle, and aviary, guinea pigs etc etc. Lots to see. Surprising the pigs pereferred outside, rather than go into their warm pen inside. It took some explaining to reveal the pigs had dug up the field, looking for grubs.

We had seen these large chicks in late september, the class was shocked how much they had grown since.