Pencaitland Primary Blog

To tie in with our “Living Things’ topic, we visited Dalkeith Country Park today.  When we arrived we played some ‘nature-themed’ games which were both good fun and reminded us of some of the things we had learnt about plants and animals during this topic.  To keep active we also played some football and rounders.  We had lunch in the courtyard and then met the Ranger for a walk round the woods.  This was good timing because the tree canopy protected us from the rain which had just started! The Ranger showed us how to identify beech, oak, horse-chestnut and sycamore trees.  He also pointed out plants, ferns and flowers as well as showing us how to spot evidence of animal activity -for example markings on trees left by roe deer, and holes left by woodpeckers.  We also saw the tallest tree in the wood, a giant redwood.  We had time at the end of the visit to squeeze in a trip to the adventure playground - as you can imagine that was one of our highlights of the day!