This week, Year 3 and Year 4 had a brilliant day out in the country at Epping Forest! What a wonderful opportunity it was to get out of the city and into the countryside for some fresh air and to surround ourselves with nature!
We were particularly excited for the journey because the coach was a double decker and it wasn’t as long as we thought it would be because the traffic was very kind to us. Once we arrived, we had a snack and a toilet stop before heading out into the forest for orienteering. We were in small groups of 4 or 5 and we were given a bag filled with prompts to help us with questions and clues at each stop. The map and compass was a necessity for finding our way and we found at each stop a question, which we needed the clue in the bag for. Some of the questions were really tricky!
For example, one stop asked us about the use of this land in the past and the clue in our bag was a newspaper article from the 1800s. The answer to the question was of course, the Victorian era. Once we had found all the stops and answered all the questions, we made it back to the starting point and every group managed to complete all the questions in the time we were given. It wasn’t easy of course and strolling casually wasn’t an option! An unexpected burst of rainfall was short-lived, thank goodness!
After we had lunch, it was time to head into a densely wooded area which was a fantastic opportunity for an Art activity. Each of us had a clipboard, paper, crayons and pencils. The pencils were for sketching and the crayons were for shading. We used woodland materials such as twigs, leaves and the bark of trees to shade over with crayons and create wonderful images on our sketch papers.
By the time we were back on the coach, we were all very tired after so much walking but it had been a lovely day! The coach journey was once again shorter than expected and we arrived back way ahead of schedule, which meant we made it back for home time! Thank you so much to Ms Carruthers for organising this trip, the SVPA for funding it and all the parent volunteers who joined us!
