Wicor Grounds: January 2018

Chips away!

This autumn we were delighted to receive a generous donation from a business in our local community. Cedar Tree Surgeons have delivered over 4 truck fulls of wood chip recycled from their work in the local area. This wood chip provides a much needed material for us to use for landscaping areas of our woodland and also for paths and mulching.

With a few acres of grounds to manage wood chip is a fabulous durable material that is light to lift, fun to move for our pupils and also a great way to recycle.

One year 4 pupil enjoyed pressing the button!

The pile that grew and grew, year R thought they were explorers climbing this one.

Always a fun job, even after school.

One chipped area, great job Year 5.

With many thanks to Cedar Tree Surgeons for their kind donation.

All materials collected and ready to start.

Friday was our winter grounds day and we had a challenge in store. As part of our natural history learning is about structures we started to look at the nests for birds that visit our grounds.

This is going to be so easy!

We began the day by mixing up as a year group, and splitting off into small groups. Each group was then given a bird to research. We found out about the types of nest each bird built, the materials that were used and the structure - were they loosely put together or woven tightly. Then off we went to find our materials. This needed a bit more thought than anticipated as many of us picked up branches that might have been the right size for a nest for us, but not for the bird - we forgot they needed to carry their nesting materials in their bills. We also needed a little bit of creativity as some of the birds used spiders webs to help the twigs and grasses stick together - so we used wool as getting our hands on spiders webs just wasn't going to happen. Lichen was also needed in many cases. Once we found out what it was and where to find it, we had to decide on how to collect it. Most of us found large twigs on the floor under the trees with lichen on and we took it back to base camp to scrape it off onto our collecting plates. We used soft grasses such as pampas to help line the nests along with feathers and moss.

Lichen collecting or fire making?

What to do?

After we had our materials we then started the process of making the nests. This looked so easy on paper, but proved to be very hard indeed. It took us much longer than we anticipated. The hardest bit was how to start. Some of us wove a base structure with twigs, others used the grasses to make wreaths and some made mud pies. Most of us forgot to make sure the bottom of the nest was attached to the sides so when it was picked up the bottom (and any eggs) fell out. Miss Ray and Mrs Nash thought our nest making was hilarious and offered very little help - they just walked around laughing at us...we'd like to see their attempt!

Nicely collected materials, all neatly sorted.
Now for the building.

We had so much fun and continued to learn how to work together, cooperate, communicate and problem solve. Next step? To design a bird with evolution in mind!