Mr Rumbold is very excited to be supporting the pupils in building our very own Celtic Roundhouse in the forest school area at the top of our school field.

Roundhouses were the standard form of housing for Celtic tribes, and were built from the natural materials they had available to them, with the walls being either dry stone or a ring of support poles.  Our Year 2 children have already started to construct our roundhouse using wooden poles, and other pupils are looking forward to contributing to the project.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Our Year 2 children carried out some forestry work today, clearing and chopping the branches that had fallen in the recent windy weather.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Our Year 2 children were measuring and comparing sizes of tree trunks today, using themselves as tape measures!  Did you know that although trees grow at different rates depending on the climate and other conditions, you can calculate a rough estimate of a tree’s age from the girth of its trunk?  Trees such as oak, ash, beech and sycamore increase in circumference by approximately 1.5–2.5cm per year depending on their location, so by measuring the trunk circumference and dividing by 1.5 or 2.5 you can get a good idea of age. This method is known as ‘Mitchell’s Rule’, named after a UK tree expert called Alan Mitchell.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.