Category: Outdoors

Outdoor learning Day, pt 1: Dow’s Wood

The Biggies went down to the woods this morning.

It is beginning to get a little more spring like, we noticed daffodils, hawthorn leaves and hazel catkins and buds.

We saw a buzzard hunting and heard and then saw a Woodpecker high in a tree.

We collected some nouns, verbs and adjective for later use and we also picked quite a lot of material for our bee hotel.

The Bee Hotel Food Court

Today some of the class started working on our raised flower beds that will be planted with wildflowers for the occupants of our, yet to be built, bee hotel.

The Class did a great job with hardly any paint on clothes. They also wrote some notes for their e-portfolio, I’ve put some of these below.

This term we have been learning about bees so the Kilsyth rotary club reached out and they had a big chat with us about bees and gave us information about what bees like. Tthey wanted to make a bee hotel with us and we are also making some wild flower planters and the look amazing.
Josh

We are going to “bee” building a bee hotel, but it can also be for other bugs and flies an wasps.

We are getting help for the bee hotel from the Kilsyth Rotary Club. For this We need items with many holes in them like bricks, leaves, straw/grass, sticks, wood, slates, lots of wood, logs, moss and lots of other natural objects and un-natural objects to.
Hollie

The next time they came they talked to us about what flowers would be suitable to plant they said that our Bee hotel would be for other small creatures. Like moths and flys and unfortunately wasps. When they left they gave us something called collars. Not a dog collars they were big wooden planks the opened up into a square shape.
Ben

So today we got these six wood planks and they bend and turn into a squares, and we got six of them, we painted them with white primer paint. So our teacher told two students to get one plank outside, and he showed us how to paint it carefully.
Alfred

Once we’ve done that we will fill it with soil and wild flower seeds. Soon we will be making the bee hotel but we need to get sticks, stones,log extra. We will use that to make the hotel. People will be bringing stuff in for the hotel suck as bricks with holes, bamboo and other stuff. Once it’s done we will look at it and leave.
Hazel

The next step is for the collars to dry then put designs on them then let them dry and get varnished dried yet again and then be made into raised beds for wild flowers to a-tracked bees and not that welcome but wasps next we will build the actual hotel which may “bee” a challenge but we can manage it I’m sure because I’m “bee-ing” positive.
Hollie

We still need to get some things for the bee hotel like tomorrow we are going to go to the woods and collect some stuff for the bee hotel like sticks and other things. We haven’t started to build the bee hotel yet but the bee people will be coming back after the Easter holidays to build the bee hotel with us. Some people will be bringing some stuff in like bamboo and bricks with holes in it.
Rhuaridh

We have been sent out to our homes and soon other places to collect items and other materials that bees and insects can fit through, for example a brick (the brick would have to possess holes within itself to be accepted and put into use.)
Charlie

In the afternoon the class did a bit of design work and started transferring their designs to the pained collars.

#MathsWeekScotland Fun

A short week in the biggies, but we managed to have a bit of maths fun with an outdoor tables challenge and some tarsia puzzles. We also worked on collaborative problem solving with diagrams.

If you would like to try some simple multiplication and division tarsia, you could try these ones, print them out and mix them up:

Highlights of a short week in the Biggies

The biggies has a sporty week:

On Monday we practised our junior leaders routines. We will lead activities with p1-3 very soon.

On Wednesday we had a visit from Active Schools Julie and a Rugby Scotland Coach. We had a great time play some rugby based activities.

We also did some group work on Climate Change:

 

Group Work Climate ChangeWe finished the week by meeting up with the Primary 1-3 and sharing the Autumn zines we made last week.

Biggies time at Dow’s woods

Today we went to Dow’s woods with the wee ones. We were all looking for signs of autumn. The biggies and the wee ones were partners. This is how our trip went …

Signs of autumn

When we were walking with our wee partners we were looking out for signs of autumn some of the sings we found were hazelnuts that had fallen of of a tree, brambles, rowan berries, and changing leaves some of these things we collected.  Also the biggies were looking out for trip hazards and eye hazards while we were walking with our wee buddies.

When we arrived to our spot

When we arrived to out usual spot in the woods we looked for more signs after that our wee buddies had to leave. Once they left we decided to draw a tree we each picked a tree to draw. We have to remember which tree we drew because we are going to go back and draw it in different seasons. When we were finished drawing we wrote some poems about our trees.

Games and chaos

When we finished drawing and writing we played some games the games we played were sardines. Which is where a couple of people hide and if you find a person you have to hide with them until eventually everyone is found. When I found someone they were lying down on the mud hiding so then I had to join them until their was three of us thankfully time was up. Then after that we ran all the way back to school.

I really enjoyed the wood especially getting to show the wee ones the wood since some of them have never seen it. I hope we do this again some time.

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