Weald Woodfair

Pupils from St Thomas' School, Winchelsea and Sandown School, Hastings, visited the Woodfair.

They were able to talk to craft workers about their products, ask questions of organisations and examine machinery.

Some were lucky enough to get close looks at a variety of bat species.

Later, a range of hands-on activities were available, including weaving, charcoal and drama, along with demonstrations of bread-baking in a clay oven and working horses.

Rye Harbour Pebble Workshops

Miriam Bowley, Rye Harbour's Wetland Discovery Officer, led Pebble Workshops as part of her programme of Summer Family Activities.
Rye Harbour is almost entirely composed of flint pebbles, which have accumulated there over the last 500 years, so the raw material was plentiful.
Children learnt to sort and age pebbles into those which were chattered, battered or shattered (the most recent).
They composed pebbles of varying colours into pictures on the concrete slipway, which they also tried scratching to find which pebbles were hardest.

Children (and adults) never cease to be fascinated by the infinite variation of the stones' pattern, texture and coloration, and can rarely resist loading themselves with far too many to keep as souvenirs.

Bloglaunch

Welcome to the RX Schools blog, freshly inaugurated in the cosy office of Lime Kiln Cottage, Rye Harbour, following the departure of a group of visiting Nature Guides from the Somme region.

Both that meeting and bloglaunch are part of my Professional Development, during which I'm hoping to set up lines of communication between educators in the RX area in order to promote outdoor education.

If you work in local schools and want advice or information on developing outdoor education in your area, you can post questions or comments here.

We'd like to know what schools are doing out of doors: school grounds improvement, gardening, local studies, field trips, co-operation with landowners, parks, reserves etc.

Work need not be limited to the usual science/geography/history areas - use of outdoor locations as a stimulus for creative work would be especially valuable at this point in time!

You can email me with your news & I'll post it on the blog, which is linked to the prize-winning RXwildlife website.