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.