50DT Camp isn't running this half term, but that's not to say our base camp (the school's brilliant wildlife area) isn't still very busy. Thanks to a Bags of Help grant from Tesco / Groundwork, Sun Hill Infant and Junior schools were able to purchase a variety of new resources to encourage wildlife to set up home in around the pond. The school sites now have hedgehog homes, bug hotels, butterfly houses, bird and bat boxes and, excitingly, motion activated night vision trail

It's that time of year: slightly cooler days but plenty of sunshine as children (and their parents) get back into their school routines - and an abundance of free food makes itself available for anyone willing to scrump. This week marked the first session of the new academic year with my 'Pondies' - a Wednesday afternoon 'club' at one of my local schools. Usually, we begin the first of our 8 sessions together with an exploration of the wildlife area and pond, but as the hedg

Easter 2018 was all about the brown, this year: Mud Chocolate Sticks Newts Nail polishes Dried insects Mud. Despite three dry days, the torrential downpours the previous week left our site looking like it was auditioning for Charlie and the Chocolate factory. Mud, mud, glorious mud. However, as always, our intrepid campers carried on regardless, and alongside creative dens, high level tree platforms, an inadvertent mud slide (sorry, Mrs O-J) and trying not to get accidental

There aren't many downsides to running 50DT camp, but one of them is the speed at which each day whizzes by, and then how quickly the weeks go by and then the summer's over before you know it. This means that most of the fabulous dangerous ideas that Denise, Caitie and I come up with on our *ahem* planning meetings in the Horse and Groom don't actually happen. Luckily, I have my little 'Pondies' to practice on at school on a Wednesday afternoon; they are up for a bit of dang