Knowing Me, Knowing Yurt: Yurts, Clay, Bats and Old Bats

The yurt build is on going and I think we're gonna be cracking on with it on our own over the next week or so instead of teaching groups how to do it. I'll keep you up dated with its progress.

I had a great afternoon sitting in the quarry on Thursday, the outdoor education area, with Anna and her kids. We made things out of the clay soil and planted some nice plants in the 'wild garden' (a small contradiction planting plants to make it wild I know). I then went from there over to Paignton to do a bat survey. It was along a country track with a few caravan parks in the area and there's a new build project going on along one side. The survey was to see how this may affect the ease of access for a roost of Greater Horseshoe Bats (one of Britians rarest bats) to their feeding grounds. We were stationed along the road at openings in the trees or on junctions to track when, how many and where the bats came from and went to. a great experience which we should be doing again in the next few weeks before it gets too cold for the bats (and me).

On Friday I worked with a local primary school who came to Sharpham. We were a bit rushed as the school phoned in the morning to change what activities they wanted to do (why do teachers think this is acceptable?). I did some pond and stream dipping and also told them all about meanders in rivers and different features of the rivers. I love teaching kids as they're so inquisitive. But I'd prefer it if the teachers stayed somewhere else and just drank tea. The teachers were moaning all the time about how far we were walking. They were rushing everything along because they were getting hungry and were always shouting at the kids. At no point did they think about the students! I really want to become a teacher (I'm currently applying) but working with teachers always puts me off because I don't want to become one of them!

Despite all that I still want to be a teacher and again really enjoyed working with the Forest School on Saturday. 4 hours playing with kids, educating them, letting them climb trees and have sticks and also showing them cool stuff and doing story telling is my perfect day. Looking forward to doing it again this weekend. I'll go into more detail about that then.

Moved a yurt today and you can follow they steps in the photos below. I'm also upgrading my yurt to a bigger one and will put photos up when I move in tomorrow.