'Sense'ational Woodland!

I deliberately didn't take my camera with me today when I took my girls to the woods, as I sometimes get a little too taken up with getting nice shots and lose the essence of what we are enjoying!  We went to Dudmaston Dingle near Bridgnorth, it is an absolute treasure of a woodland valley and we were totally absorbed for a happy two hours! 

Later on I reflected on what we had done and realised that all five senses had a good workout whilst we were there:

• Sound - we listened to the birds, heard a mouse scurry away, heard the steam trains.  We also tapped logs with sticks (OK we whacked them!) to listen to the sound to see whether the wood was healthy or rotten and used pine cones as instruments to rake down the edges of cut logs and across bark. We threw pebbles into the water and listened to the splashes.
• Sight - we collected different specimens of lichen on fallen twigs, we identified some trees by their leaves and bark and learned some new ones, observing the shape of the leaves. We dug through rotting wood to find bugs and looked at the shapes, sizes and colours of fungi. We watched the patterns of the sun dancing through the canopy of trees and twinkling off the lake.
• Touch - we felt healthy wood, crumbled rotting wood, touched leaves, insects, berries, water, rocks, grasses, we felt the wind through our hair and the sun warm on our faces
• Smell - we collected pine cones full of delicious smelling sap to take home.
• Taste - we picked and ate juicy blackberries!!

All this and more.... we observed wood in various stages of the rotting process, we looked at how a once tiny sapling had grown into a mature tree and split a rock apart as it grew, we peered down a freshly dug badger set and looked at the footprints left outside, and the girls ran and balanced and jumped and climbed and pushed and pulled and sang and laughed and.... didn't fall of the stepping stones over the stream!!!