The education pack, 'St Ronan's Primary School Nature Trail: Resources', designed to support the five-to-14 environmental studies curriculum, has five sections on plants, mini- beasts, materials, conservation, and people and places, with activities for the classroom and outdoors, as well as a CD-Rom.
The nature trail in Innerleithen has a timber-edged bark path and is surrounded by wild flowers and a variety of trees. There is also an outdoor classroom with seats for up to 30 children carved out of an old oak tree.
St Ronan's principal teacher, Amanda Findlay, said, 'We asked staff to incorporate their lessons into the nature trail each month. Ideas ranged from having art classes in the outdoor classroom, to looking at the formation of trees for a rainforest project on environmental studies.'
Dave Warburton, a retired outdoor education adviser in the Borders, was commissioned to write the pack, which has already generated a lot of interest through word-of-mouth.
Mrs Findlay said, 'Within a week of publishing the pack, a nursery teacher from Caddonfoot Primary School came to see how she could use the nature trail and the material from the pack to teach her children about living things.'
She said the section of the pack on minibeasts was the most appropriate for nursery-age children, because it was adaptable and contained illustrations of minibeasts and cards to cut out and match. Mrs Findlay said she expected the nature trail to be of most interest to nursery-age children and added that the school hopes that groups will come to visit and use the activity pack.
The nature trail and the education pack were developed with support from agencies including Borders Forest Trust and Bridging the Borders.
Borders Forest Trust has adapted the St Ronan's project into a generic pack called 'Using your local woodland: Resources to support the five-to-14 environmental studies curriculum'.
It contains worksheets for teachers and is available from the Trust for Pounds 15. Contact Nicola Williamson at the Borders Forest Trust on 01835 830750 or e-mail nic@bordersforesttrust.org.
