Water of Leith - Learning about rivers

Today we went to the Water of Leith visitor centre to do some field work for our river project.

The workshop was led by the lovely Ruth who told us about the source of the Water of Leith and played a water cycle labelling game with us before taking us for a walk along the river.

We learned about lots of things on the walk, including finding out about the smell of otter poo!

We then did some work creating a map of the depth of the river, measuring how fast the river was running and dipping for river invertebrates.  We found all sorts of creatures including mayflies (which indicate that the water is clean), pond skaters, small fish and a horse hair worm.  The horse hair worm is a parasite which lives in invertebrates such as crickets, when it is growing.  When it is big enough it begins eating them from the inside before exiting into water (I thought it looked really creepy).

Back at the centre we tried out some interactives including a flood plain model and a water wheel and watched an information video about the Water of Leith.

Click on this link to see an animated slide show with photographs from the trip.

Fast Fliers and High Jumpers workshop

Primary 7A had a great time today at the City Arts Centre, taking part in an art workshop.  At first the children were asked to have a look at the exhibition on the Human Race about the history of sports medicine.  They then had to think of different animals and their abilities and imagine that if there had been an animal Olympics which animals would take part in which events.  The class worked in groups and then decided which animal they would like to represent as a sculpture using willow.  The ideas then started flowing as ideas were discussed and choices negotiated.

The final choices were:

• the synchronised swimming turtle team 
• the diving penguins
• a sprinting leopard
• a swimming duck
• a swimming duck-billed platypus

The class  learnt about the shapes needed to make animal bodies and limbs and how to use willow for sculpture.  Have a look at some of our work below.

Many thanks to Stephanie for running the workshop and to Anna for being brilliant at helping groups to talk through their ideas.  Sam's mum also took time out of her very busy day to help us negotiate the crowded Edinburgh pavements and buses.

For more photos click here to see a slide show.