Year 3 had a fantastic day out 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!
The coach ride was a great novelty and it’s never easy navigating the traffic out of London but we made it to Epping Forest in good time (the DVD player on the coach wasn’t working but that didn’t matter!). 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.
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!
After we had lunch, it was time to head into a densely wooded area starting with some multi-sensory observations. We had a wonderful opportunity to appreciate the sounds, sights and smells that are not easy to experience in any built-up area. It was also 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 felt longer on the way back than it did in the morning but we were still back in good 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!
