Since Easter, 3rd – 6th Classes have been exploring the outdoors with Jo and Richard in the Discovery Park as part of a 4-week programme being rolled out by Kilkenny Recreation and Sports Partnership.
The children have thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the workshop which were conducted both in the school environment and in the Discovery Park.
Below are some photos of the activities which the children engaged in, all of which supported various curricular areas such as Maths, Science, Geography, P.E. and Art.
Take a look at their participation in the programme.
The children engaged in various team building games during the first week!
Parachute Games
Clumps
The Tower of Hanoi
During the second week of the programme, the children engaged in activities relating to SESE
They explored the food chain and created a food web using string and each person had to represent a different animal that lives in the woods.
As well as this, the children had to work in teams to identify the number of years it would take for various materials to decompose! This was a difficult task and no group got the correct answers but we learned so much from this activity!
Did you know that it takes a banana skin up to 2 years to naturally decompose?
A plastic bottle depending on its size, could take up to 1,000,000 years to decompose naturally!!
As a final activity on Week 2, the children were given the task of creating a nest using anything they could find naturally in the forest. 
The challenge was to make sure the nest would stay together when it was lifted!
On the third week, the children explored maps, some of them were of the Discovery Park and others were from other parts of Ireland. 
The children once again worked in teams to identify the source of rivers as well as where lakes and other map features can be found.
In response to their work on maps and map reading, the children then worked outdoors to create their own map of the lakes and grounds within the Discovery Park. They had to find parts of nature in the school grounds that would help show areas within the map.
Below are some of their finished maps!
Didn’t they do a fantastic job?
They once again demonstrated good teamwork in this activity
The final week of the programme was back in the Discovery Park. For this week the children engaged in the PE curriculum and had to once again perform as team players.
They did wall climbing….
and they also had to wall climb as a team which wasn’t as easy!
As a final treat, the children did Archery!
On behalf of the school, I want to thank Kilkenny Recreation and Sports Partnership for providing the children with the opportunity to engage in this fantastic workshop. They thoroughly enjoyed the 4-week programme. Special thanks to Jo and Richard who implemented the programme so well from start to finish. Well done also to the children for engaging so well in all activities asked of them and showing what it takes to be a team player! 🙂
Wow amazing about the banana peel.
What an amazing opportunity to learn about our great outdoors!
it was great fun. i enjoyed it soooo much