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DITCHAM PARK SCHOOL |
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Open Morning Saturday 2nd October 10am-1pm
Staunton Country Park May 2010
It’s May time, the baby lambs have been born, mini-beasts are out and about and flowers are coming into bloom. This all means that Staunton Country Park was the next stop on Pre-Prep’s topic trail!
On a sunny Friday 14th May Pre-Prep set off for Staunton Country Park. We climbed aboard the school mini-bus and eagerly waved Ditcham goodbye as we journeyed down the South Drive towards our second big school trip of the year. Once we arrived at Staunton we met Gemma, our education officer, who showed us to our new classroom where we stored our bags and had a brief talk about keeping safe and having lots of fun! Then we were off to learn about ‘nature’s pallet’ where brighter colours are used to attract insects like bees to flowers in order to help pollination. We found lots of colours from the green of the leaves to the pinks of the petals. Gemma thought that we were so good at spotting different colours that our next ‘woolly worms’ activity involved us hunting for a mixture of different coloured worms made from wool. Gemma pretended to be a baby bird and we had to find as many worms for her as possible to help feed her. It soon became obvious that the brighter woolly worms, like red and yellow, were much easier to find than the camouflaged green and brown ones!
From camouflage to a different kind of disguise as we became human centipedes; on discovering that their sense of sight is very poor we put blindfolds on and then tagged onto the person in front of us before venturing off into the undergrowth led by our teachers. We found that our sense of touch and hearing became much better and we could easily tell what kind of surface we were walking on. Before long we reached a wooded area where we removed our blindfolds and promptly began our search for real mini-beasts using pooters, magnifying glasses and specimen pots. Gemma explained how we could identify them using a picture key and as luck would have it the mini-beasts must have known that we were coming because we managed to unearth beetles, worms, spiders, centipedes and even a fly!
Next Gemma wanted us to find out about all the things that a seed needs in order to germinate and grow up to be healthy. We played the germination game. Five of us wore labels around our necks reading either soil, air, water, heat or light. Everybody else were seeds and had to collect a card from each of the five people in order to germinate into a seedling. Thankfully we all reached germination status, although hazards such as deer, who could eat us up and Cydney, who was pretending to be a lawn mower, proved to make our lives as seedlings a little trickier than we has anticipated!
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Once germinated and fully grown we found out that plants don’t only use their colour to attract insects but their smelly properties as well. We made our way over to the garden where we made some smelly cocktails by picking herbs from the flower beds and putting them into little pots. We found basil, chives, thyme and even a herb which smelt just like curry… yummy!
With our tummies beginning to rumble our last stop before lunch was the hot house. Once inside we explored the properties of lots of different types of plants and even played a plant quiz! We put our thinking hats on in order to find plants that had smooth leaves, sharp leaves, leaves with holes in them and even leaves that were bigger than our faces! We found out that lots of these qualities were either good for allowing water to drip smoothly off the leaves and find its way to the roots in a crowded rainforest or for protecting the plant. We soon started to feel the heat as the sun returned from behind a cloud, which was a perfect time to gather on the lawn outside and make friends with a giant stick insect! Gemma said that the stick insect had an exoskeleton which meant that the protection for her body was on the outside, a bit like a coat of armour. Now that most of us are six years old (or in certain people’s cases 29!) we were feeling brave enough to give her a friendly stroke before having a chance to ask any questions about our new friend. By now we found our tummies telling us that it was most certainly time for lunch and as the sun had just reappeared from behind a cloud we set up our picnic rugs and tucked in.
After a late lunch there was time to feed and pet the animals in the farmyard (predictably we all fell in love with the baby pigmy goats) before climbing back aboard the Ditcham express and making our way back to school. We all had a wonderful time and would like to thank Mrs Crane for helping to make our day extra special. It was definitely a good day because even though we had tired ourselves out there was a buzz of excitement all the way home. We can’t wait for our next school trip…
Love from Miss Hamilton and Pre-Prep
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Contact Information:
Telephone 01730-825659 Postal Address Ditcham Park School, Ditcham Park, Nr Petersfield, Hants, GU31 5RN, England