Session 3

Our theme today was journeys and shelters. First we learnt two more knots which we would use later in the session to put up tarpaulin shelters. The first was a round turn and two half hitches, which is used to attach one end of the string to the tarpaulin:

Tying a round turn and two half hitches

The other knot was a figure of eight loop. This is tied half way along the string after it has been taken around the tree to which the shelter is going to be attached. The string is pulled through the loop and secured.

Practising the figure of eight loop using large ropes.

Ashley is very proud of her knot tying skills!!

We then went on a journey to the woods:

Before setting off we talked about three phases to our journey:

1. Questioning - ask questions about the environment we are in such as 'what type of tree is that?' Collect a leaf to find out later...
2. Research - At the end of our journey return to the classroom to find out the answers to our questions
3. Sharing - present our journeys in an imaginative way

Exploring and collecting

Using Woodland Trust 'nature detectives' to identify the trees

The items of interest we collected were threaded onto 'journey strings':

We then put up tarpaulin shelters using the knots we learnt earlier. We also had to consider:

• location e.g. take care not to trample on ground plants or erect them above brambles or nettles, which could cause injury. 
• height e.g. if building a shelter with children it should be at their height
• shelter i.e. will it shelter us from the weather?

Here are our first efforts which were excellent!

We ended the session by reflecting on the journey strings we had created. Our task before next week is to find out about two of the items on our strings and to be prepared to share our findings with the rest of the group.