Primary 4 Trip to Royal Botanic Gardens

On Thursday 18th May, we went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. We were split into groups and bussed there. When we arrived we waited a few minutes outside for the Botanic Gardens to open. We went around the side of the centre and sat down to eat our snack. After we finished, Mrs. Kumari did some quick yoga with us to stretch.

We then went back into the centre and met Julie who did a guessing game to see what we were talking about that day. We found out that it was an acorn. She showed us a big book called ‘The Lost Words’. Julie explained that the people who wrote the book noticed that some words had been disappearing from dictionaries. The writers wanted children to know these words so that they wouldn't be lost forever. They wrote this book with a page for every word that might have been lost. Each page had a lovely acrostic poem about the word and a wonderful illustration.

After this, we went out into the gardens and walked around. Julie showed us an oak tree and explained that acorns grow and fall from this type of tree. After a bit of identifying oak trees, we went into a small clearing. She gave us a bag that contained two magnifying sheets, loo rolls, dentist mirrors and a bag of words that were adjectives. First, she picked an adjective out of the bag like ‘under’ or ‘above’. Using the objects, we found a tree or plant and looked at it in different ways.

Julie then gave our teacher a whiteboard and pen while we picked a tree or a plant. We gave adjectives about the plant or the tree which our teacher wrote down. Next, we collected leaves, pinecones or twigs to make an artwork inspired by nature. Then, we laid our adjectives beside the artwork and took photos. Once we had looked at our creations, we returned all the outdoor material back to the nature around us.

We returned to the Botanical Gardens Centre and Julie read us the ‘acorn’ poem one last time. After that we collected our bags and went back to the place where we had our snack earlier. We ate all our lunch which was a sandwich, orange/apple, bag of crisps and one Kit Kat. Last of all, we went back to the entrance outside and waited for the bus.

Here are some things the P4s said about the trip:

“I just liked all the activities!”

“My favourite part was when we looked at ‘The Lost Words’ book.”

“What I liked most about the trip was when we walked through the fairy trail.“

“I liked it when we looked at the plants from all the different angles.”

“I loved it when we found a ladybird on an old oak tree!”

Written by Gigi (P4)