Davies and Scarlett went down to Ranger Mike’s this morning for J Ranger. Not sure how much I’ve blogged about this and can’t be bothered to read back! Davies wanted to spend some time shadowing Mike to learn just what a ranger does incase it’s something he considers as a future job, also to learn from Mike and his extensive wildlife and nature knowledge. Possibly also just to hang out with Mike actually as he is pretty cool :). He asked Mike about it and although it has morphed slightly as Mike has gone into Teacher Mode and is creating a mini curriculum and Scarlett is now going along too they are all three getting loads out of it so I certainly have no complaints. A whole morning every week of dedicated ranger time with loads of practical outside stuff too is a dream come true for our kids and precisely what we moved here hoping for 🙂 :).
Today they continued their work from last week about biomes and learnt about our biome which is temperate deciduous. They are learning about how the climate and environment dictates the wildlife and plantlife in an area aswell as doing some Darwin stuff about evolution alongside it. Mike really seems to be passionate about this and is putting loads of effort into amassing resources, planning in advance and wanting to put up displays of their work in the visitor centre and community hall. It’s a perfect mix of indoor and outdoor stuff, arts and crafts, learning with books, online resources and getting out and about. Today they created a J ranger logo, watched some stuff online about biomes, got distracted by Muppet show clips on youtube, went for a walk all along the village gathering leaves and identifying trees and then came back and drew pictures of leaves and labelled them in their books.
In the meantime I had a chat with Claire, helped Vikki make and move the community composter and then Ady and I went to Fliss and Sandy’s to do some more painting. The kids walked round to us there and took Bonnie out for a walk before playing more with Muppet toys and Joss. We put some chairs (camping chairs, not needed again now til the spring) into the workshop there as Sandy has given us a corner to use for storage. We’ve also moved down some books from the horsebox that we don’t have room for in the static and I was worried about getting damp. It means the horsebox is ready to be filled with tinned goods from our mainland trip.
We came up to the croft and the pigs were out (Scarlett had left the electric fence off, oops!) so we got them back in and then Ian came up for a cup of tea and to be shown how to feed the animals as he is looking after them for us while we’re away. I typed up the minutes from the last RCA and emailed them out – trying to tidy up as many loose ends as possible before we go as we have two solid weeks of guests once we’re back. Scarlett and I cleaned out Humphrey and I packed our bag to take off island. Ady cleaned out the car and then I took it loaded with the bag to the other side of the river, called down to the shop to hand in next weeks veg order and came home to cook dinner. Ady and I had showers (we were very painty and dusty) and we all watched Countryfile on iplayer as it had been in Lochaber last week.