If You Go Down To The Woods Today...

We had a great, adventurous day out in the forest last week, taking our time to meander our way through the trees and undergrowth on a two and a half hour hike towards Thorpe Woodlands Adventure park for our afternoon of problem solving team activities (it only actually takes less than a 45 min stroll on direct paths, but as true explorers, we didn't take the easy, known, route of course!)

Here are some snippets of our adventures in the woods, learning how it is used as a business as well as a wonderful habitat for wildlife.

Using our maps and compass to find our route, and identification charts to identify trees along the way.

Comparing the height and growth of the saplings planted by the Forestry Commission. Plenty of number crunching working out how many trees were in this area alone!

Thousands of trees trunks ready felled for harvesting into wood products.

From little to large!

We were fascinated by the size of the hole and the roots of this tree, uprooted by the winter storms.

There was plenty of evidence that animals live here, footprints, bark scratching, nibbled leaves and loads of these nibbled fir cones. We worked out several food chains!

 This was an experience that heightened our senses - being lead blindfold through the forest, developing trust in our friends too!

And onto Thorpe Woodlands for our teamwork problem solving activities... 

Local inspiration

We have had an exciting week of developments for our new Woodland Area. First, the children's letter writing has paid dividends, with the arrival of a kind donation of tree stumps for the 'sitting circle'. Liberty pressed the button on the remote control to unload the truck from Broadland Tree Sevices. We shall arrange them after more measuring and planning... Some pallets have been donated as well, by Mr Germany of Foulgers, which will be made into Bug hotels.  We shall be writing more letters requesting odd bits and pieces to fill them with- like bricks with holes, small logs, bundles of straw, terracotta flower pots, hollow pipes or bamboo canes - so look out for a newsletter soon and please keep any of the above for us if you are having a garage or garden tidy! Thank you to all our supporters so far! I am hoping to  enlist help to dig, hammer, plant and place  the collected resources to create the  planned area soon after half term so it will be ready for the whole school to use from early spring.

Here we are measuring the circumference and diameter of the proposed sitting circle.

..and here we are a few days later when the truck arrived with the stumps!

Our bird watching continued this week - in the warm and dry of the classroom! A local young artist visited to inspire us to sketch and paint the birds. She has had her paintings of wildlife printed into cards....we might just do the same!