Session 5 A-peeling sticks!

Another fresh windy day but thankfully the rain held off.
The group are becoming very accustomed to the routine and quickly donned their waterproofs and wellingtons, then helped me to carry out the site and weather assessment.
We began the session with a recap of how to tie a reef knot. The members of the group who mastered it straight away were keen to assist others in the group.
Once we had all had a go at tying a good reef knot, we linked all of our ropes together to create on big loop.
We passed a Mexican wave around the loop and played some games which relied on trusting each other to hold the tension in the rope.


I mentioned to the group that the Class one teacher had been very impressed with the pictures she had seen of our giant spider's web and had asked if we would be able to recreate it for the class project on 'take a closer look'
The group were very excited at have the artwork commissioned, so we chatted about how we could make a frame to build a web on in class. The children suggested that the frame would need eight sides and could be built from the sticks on the log pile. We set about finding similar sized branches. I demonstrated to the group how to safely use the loppers and secateurs to cut the branches to the correct length. The children were keen to get involved, so I showed them how the peelers could be used to strip the bark from the branches.
The children were soon completely absorbed in peeling the bark from the branches and before we knew it, it was time to tidy away! We stacked up the prepared branches in the log pile and will return to making the web frame next time.