Tuck Shop Developments

 Schools this Summer have enjoyed shopping in our new enlarged and improved Tuck Shop. Taking advantage of over twice the amount of room Debbie has expanded the product range of goods for sale and there are now several exciting new lines in gifts and souvenirs that are proving very popular with students.

In fact we think it wont be long before Debbie has a whole chain of shops and franchises coming to a place near you along with on-line shopping as well!

We recommend for a 5 day stay that students bring a maximum of £8-£10 and that limits are set by visiting staff on what can be spent on 'tuck'. We do after all feed them well on three meals a day! With an increasing turnover and increased product range Debbie has more work to do with stock taking and reordering and to help with this and auditing requirements we now have even got a till! This replaces the old cash box and allows recording on till rolls for money spent each week. As this is a job carried out by visiting staff we ask them to familiarise themselves with the easy to use instructions that explain all.

The profit from our tuck shop goes on buying new recreational equipment for student use and to charity.

Comfortable Viewing & Great Spectator Sport

The Trapeze Bar Jump (aka The Leap of Faith) has always made excellent spectator sport. Although at first glance it might appear to be a very individual challenge, certainly requiring a great deal of personal commitment to undertake, we have over the years also found it to be an excellent team activity. This is because the group empathise and share the experience and we hope to create a very supportive and encouraging ethos to the activity whereby each participant is supported and willed on by their peers. In this way we have often found individuals push their comfort zones to achieve things thay could not do on their own. They then have great satisfaction and pride in their achievement, whether it is getting half way up the pole and having a swing off or making it all the way on to the platform and actually leaping and catching the bar. The challenge can graduated as above and also by moving the bar nearer or further from the platform according to individual's height and challenge threshold.

We've now made this excellent spectator sport more comfortable viewing by positioning a bench for sitting on in a safe and good viewing position.

The viewing bench for the leap of Faith has proved so popular that we've gone and added one for the Zip Wire as well. This activity also requires team work to operate as their are jobs to do to get the zip rope back to the top of the tree for the next person. Retrieval ropes need pulling, ropes need unclipping and people climbing the ladder need their safety rope pulling on. So it's not all sitting about, but once you have gone down you can have a quick sit down to relax after your adrenaline rush and watch other experiencing the same thrill before congratulating them on their achievement.

New BBQ Benches

We recently took delivery of 6 new flatpacked picnic benches for use in our BBQ area

As I write this Andy, our Caretaker, is busy bolting and screwing them together.

They'll get there first use next Thursday when we have our next BBQ for a group of 60 students and 8 staff. As always we will be hoping for good weather.

These new benches are the first stage of several planned improvements to the BBQ area to make it an even better location for hosting BBQ's and Bonfires.

Blue Tit Chicks in the Nestbox

Well those 10 little eggs have now hatched out into Blue Tit chicks. We've only definitely counted 8 chicks but the camera is slightly off centre and their may be another two hidden. Also it's a bit crowded in the nest anyway and some chicks end up under the others.

When they were first hatched they were entirely without feathers and looked like little redskinned aliens. They're now fluffing up nicely and their feathers are growing well. The stronger chicks are taking turns to practice flapping their stumpy little wings when they manage to get to the top of the pile.

When they hear Mum or Dad approach they all start squawking loudly with their beaks open hoping to get fed. With lots of hungry mouths to feed the parents are returning every 2 or 3 minutes with food.

No doubt by next week some of the chicks will be getting ready to fledge. The school children with us at the moment are enjoying watching the live video footage from the nestbox in the laboratory when they are doing their stream study activity session. There is audio too so they get to hear the chicks cheeping as well. Unfortunately it's not easy to take good photos of a television image so these pictures don't do it justice. You have to be here!

DFSC Neighbours Open Day

 Yesterday we had an Open Day for our neighbours in Parkend. We had put invites into the letter boxes of over 165 houses in the village and had about 50 people come and take part. We started with an introduction and talk about what we do and then split into two groups to do a tour of the Centre Grounds and to discuss possible ideas for community use of our proposed classroom redevelopment (more about this in future Blog Posts)

 After that people were then keen to have a go at some of the activities for themselves. We had a keen queue for the Zip wire with children from aged 4 through to adults and a wheelchair user all going down.

 We use a slightly different system for wheelchair users whereby they are winched onto the zip wire and then pulled back up into the tree for lauch. Our wheelchair using zip wire enthusiast enjoyed himself so much he had 5 goes!

There was plenty for all to see while waiting a turn or even if they didn't participate themselves. Activities such as the Leap of Faith (Trapeze Jump) make great spectator sport. We were particularly impressed by one plucky 5 year old local girl who as well as reaching the top of the climbing tower was also our youngest ever participant to make it on to the Leap of Faith Platform and jump for the Trapeze Bar!

 We charged a nominal £1 a go and through this raised £33 for Parkend Primary School in the village to put towards buying something for their play equipment.

 As well as 'adventure activities' we also had children stream and pond dipping and looking at their catch under microscopes in the Lab. There was also a fair bit of interest in viewing the live camera feed from one of our nestboxes where a blue tit is presently sitting on 10 eggs. 

 We'll keep you posted how things develop with our blue tit family and how many chicks are raised.

All in all a very sucessful day and one that was hopefully very much enjoyed by our guests, some of whom although living in the village all their lives hadn't really realised what we do.

Royal Wedding Celebration Lunch

Well we didn't quite organise a street party but we did have a special Royal Wedding party lunch for our resident school group last week. Complete with bunting, table decorations, Royal Wedding Posters, Union Jack serviettes and party food. This was all Jane's idea - any excuse for a party. She did however decline when I asked her to lead on singing the national anthem! Much enjoyed by all staff and students.



New Microscopes for Stream Study

Our Stream Study activity session has always been a high quality scientific learning experience. It also has two intrinsically motivating aspects that particularly enthuse the students - catching things in the stream (occassionally they even catch fish!) and then looking at them under the microscopes and seeing their intenstines etc. moving around magnified 20x's.

They start by watching a short DVD of a HTV news report from several years back that tells of how the stream was once polluted by chemical waste being illegally dumped in the lake upstream killing off all the wildlife. Their investigation is to see if the stream has recovered. Fortunately it has and we don't send them into a toxic wasteland!

 Having collected a variety of creatures from the stream  they return to the Lab to find out what they are called and look at them under a microscope. A flow chart identifies the various fresh water shrimps, caddis larvae and mayfly nypmhs etc. and then a water quality sheet scores each animal for water quality. Some like a Rat-tailed maggot can survive in fairly polluted water and only score 1/2 out of 10 for water quality, whereas a Sonefly Nymph scores 10/10 as it it very intollerant to any pollution.

We have just put into service some brand new monocular style microscopes that are easier particularly for younger children to operate. There's 12 of them so each student has their own to use and doesn't need to wait a turn.

NB Just in case you were worried...hopefully no animals are harmed during this activity! They can survive out of water under a microscope for quite some time and then at the end of the session they are returned to the stream. Some of them have probably been viewed more than once and are getting used to it by now.