Session 1 The Worm
Outdoor Active, Holy Cross’ new outdoor education program began this week and Year 2 and 3 had a wonderful experience. Each class spent half of the day outside in their outdoor classroom and in the garden and woodland area in the school grounds.
The children explored the whole area identifying the habitats of creatures including: foxes, woodlice, slugs, snails, worms, ladybird and various birds. They then took part in a national survey of worms. This involved selecting an area and searching a foot square of freshly dug earth, extracting, identifying and counting the worms they found. Surprisingly most children handled the worms with enthusiasm and without being disgusted – this did not apply to quite all, a few children did find them too slimy to deal with! But the teams work together so that no one had to touch them if they didn’t want to and their results have been added to the national data base. Well done teams you have helped Earth worms allover the UK!
Finally some groups had time to build shelters, experimenting with tarpaulin, ropes and stick to provide themselves with a dry space.
Year 2 and 3 showed great team spirit, plenty of knowledge and interest in the natural world and a good sense of adventure. Over the coming weeks we will be: telling stories, performing scientific experiments, playing games, creating outdoor nature-art, building hibernation homes, designing and building dens and writing plays, but most importantly enjoying the outdoors and each other’s company.
