During the summer term we have explored a wide range of subject areas with the different classes. Our Science focus was Biodiversity but we often linked this to our ‘interest’ this term as well…

P1/2 chose to focus on Ladybirds and continued to explore positional language and number work. We therefore created some ladybird houses, our own ladybirds and on your journey to place the ladybird houses in the field did some sweep net and ‘tree shake’ experiments making a journey stick to represent our route once we returned to base.

With P2/3 we undertook some bird identification, hunted for small fauna, identified leaves by playing leaf snap, made leaf rubbings and used a game called ‘Instincts’ to understand how animals interact. We planted some wheat and potatoes to grow and harvest later in the term. On the last day of term, we made some new planters for next year, created our own animals with habitats for them and harvested our potatoes, cooking them on the fire to make chips. We had quite a lot of potatoes!

P3/4 were exploring transport this term and this was our outdoor focus.. During our first session we tested various boat designs and materials for making boats. We even powered a cardboard paddle board using soap! Next, we moved onto aeroplanes and straw gliders. We discovered our foil boats were the most robust and on occasion the straw glider beat the paper aeroplane.

Later in the. term we made functioning cars and explored the concept of time, estimating the time it would take us to roll a tyre across the playground and making a 10 second timer with guttering.

P5 were exploring the interconnection between flora and fauna, food chains, food webs, predator/prey relationships and native Scottish animals. We played native Scottish species top trumps, made a wool food web and our own food chain stories - everything originates with the sun which grows a… which is eaten by a…. etc…Later in the year we walked to our local river, having created a range of fishing nets and undertook the shuffle river dipping technique to find a range of fauna..

For P6 I combined the Victorians and Biodiversity. To begin, we looked at Darwin and his travels on the Beagle around the world which lead him to write ‘origins of the Species’ . We therefore did our own survey’s from a bird hide we created and a hoop flora count. During the same session we played the victorian hoop and stick game and made a victorian bird in the cage (a thaumatrope) using native bird species from the UK.

During our second session we looked at extinction (the first paper written on the process extinction was written in Victorian times by Alfred Newton, which alongside Darwin increased public awareness of this environmental issue). We looked at endangered and rare species of Scotland, with a focus on Bats and the reintroduction programme of Dormice in the Borders. We made our own Dormouse houses, in case. they made it up to Crieff. We tested bat detectors and played the bat and moth game to help understand how bat’s feed and navigate.

P7 were exploring WW1 and so we had a WW1 day. First we looked at my grandad’s medals from WW1 and read how he bravely captured some German soldiers on a covert mission. We then reenacted crawling across no man’s land following whistle commands. One of our party got injured and so we looked at how we could use coats or ‘blankets’ (tarp) to transport them to safety and perform first aid. We then signalled using semaphore secret messages and sent for airplane reconnaissance, making our own bi-planes.

It has been a busy Term and I have been working 3 weeks non-stop. I was back at the Royal Highland Show with volunteer help exploring Peat again for Peatland action. This year, alongside the favourites we looked at the absorbency of Peat comparing it to paper and other materials….. I tried to count the number of young people we worked with, it was around 794 over the 4 days.

When not at the show I have been supporting a large private nursery chain in improving their outdoor learning through coaching and face to face training…. we are nearing the end of phase one, having reviewed policy and unskilled a number of staff.

Plus, the second cohort of Learning Beyond the Classroom from Orkney have completed and 2 further cohorts have completed training and are starting to submit their portfolios already!!!

A BUSY FEW MONTHS!!