All out again and the sun is shining yet again! A lot of weather about but we seem to be lucky.
Walk to the forest was straight forward and Liam in his wheelchair joined us, suitably dressed and covered up as it does get cold. Today we were focusing on science and arrived at the forest and I got a fire going with a small group while the two groups, the wolves and the bears, were sent to their den areas and were asked to create some sort of wide game that they would share with everybody. The fire pit was uncovered and a fire was lit, with help from cotton wool, Vaseline and a tinder stick.
At a blow of a whistle the class came round the fire to follow on a naming game involving alliteration and adjectives (recap from last session). Round the fire discussions involved, managing risk in the forest, fire rules, taking the temperature, why smoke rises and why it is not as cold as last time.

Science activities were focusing on observation and collection.
….In their trios, with a white board and pen,write down the alphabet and fill in any sight, sound, touch or smell that exist in the forest. A fun scavenger hunt!.
……Science collection display. Trios have to 6 items and place them in their egg box and label ie stcky, smooth, red etc. At the end the collections were put on display and spokespersons were given an opprrtunity to talk about them.

Personal reflection/Evaluation
The fire was a good focal point and after discussing the ground rules the pupils were good at following them. It was a great natural time to go over risk management and talk about the risks that may impact on the pupils. The activities were too similar and could have varied slightly. Pupils slighted as they did not play their made up games so will do next time. Liam has to be warm as can get cold very quickly.

Happy New Year and hoping for an enjoyable 2016, where Outdoor Learning will be embedded into my practice.Before Christmas P5C and myself were fortunate in working with Wild Things! for 7 weeks every Wednesday on a sustainable Enterprise Forest school experience. The pupil’s made lots of goodies to sell at the Christmas fair, including Scented, waxed cones, Christmas decorations for trees and bird feeders. All was filmed using I pads and we were all impressed so , with the help of the Parent Partnership, we intend to spend our money on purchasing an I pad for ourselves.
So here we are, finding ourselves in January, without Wildthings!, but hey, lets carry on with the Outdoor Learning! We were all geared out to go out for the morning so let’s continue with the good practice. We intend to start the John Muir Award, taking us through spring to summer so up to that I asked the pupils what they wished to do and they came up with curricular days i.e. literacy, numeracy and Science.
So today was based our learning around literacy activities. We had borrowed the Tepee from the Moray Outdoor Learning group and headed off to the Quarrel woods, a 25 minute walk from Seafield primary, 20 pupils and 3 adults. It was minus 3 degrees but a fine sunny morning and the tepee was slightly problematic but we got there. Warm up activities, running about, keeping warm and then:
…..in groups of 3,find an object ie stick, fir cone, feather, stone, a worm(!), moss and add two adjectives before it, more points if alliteration is involved. Group then have to say their answer, with feeling! Answers given included ‘
a twisted, twirly twig’, ‘ a smooth,wiggly worm’.
…… Trios given white board and pen and after discussion in tepee then they have to create a poem about the forest in winter. Good poems came out.

Personal Reflection/ Evaluation.
A good morning, although very cold. pupils appropriately dressed but a fire would have been good instead of the tepee. The tepee would have been better if I had a chance to put it up first as it took a lot of time and some pupils became cold. The activities were okay but would like to follow up with activities around the adjective family ie simile and metaphors. Can follow up in class.
Trios were good, easy to work with.