Holt Hall Residential 2016

Our final day at Holt Hall and we used our map-reading and compass skills to do some orienteering. This was highly competitive, with points on offer for finding the posts, yet in a serene setting...

Farewell Holt Hall, we had an amazing time...

Holt Hall Residential 2016

Here we are in our bedrooms. Some of the bedrooms are enormous!

Then it was outdoors again for playing at the play area- climbing, swinging, drumming, den-building-then further options of football and capture the flag. 

After showers and difficult choices at the souvenir shop we were back outside for a campfire with hot chocolate and marshmallows. Mmmm...

We read through the beginning of our play, finishing off our evening outside with the Hokey Cokey and the Conga!

Ready for sleep!

Holt Hall Residential 2016

Raft building this afternoon- what fun!

First a water safety talk, then building...

The finished rafts...

Will they float? Ooooooh!

Cheerleaders!

So...everyone built successful rafts and nobody sank! Yippee!

Then a treecreeper chick arrived by the lake. We hope it found its nest again...

After jacket potatoes an evening of fun ahead...

Dissecting owl pellets

Today we dissected Barn owl pellets.  We are studying Skellig  by David Almond in English ; the book has lots of images of birds in it and the main characters find Barn owls . Barn owls eat their prey  whole but they can't digest  the bones or fur so regurgitate them as pellets out of their beaks. We were able to find out what the Barn owls had eaten by careful dissection and identification of the bones  found.

We worked using tweezers  as the bones were  very fragile

Can you guess what it is?

Bones !

We found  many small mammal bones  belonging to voles, wood mice and  brown rats . 

Holt Hall Residential 2016

After dinner we spent some time in the Games room 

To ensure we slept well tonight we went out to play on the play equipment , football,volleyball and tree climbing.

And to ensure we slept really well we went out for a bat walk in the grounds of Holt Hall. We use bat detectors that detected bat sounds. 

What beautiful flowers! 

Although we had a lovely walk, we didn't see or hear any bats at all.

Holt Hall Residential 2016

We arrived  at Holt Hall after a fairly long journey  taking what must have been the scenic route!   After a settling - in talk , fire alarm test and sorting out our rooms , we headed off to West Runton to do some rock pooling.

A Hermit crab ! 

After rock pooling, we went to look at the   sediment layers in the cliff that have built up over thousands of years; the West Runton mammoth was found here. 

Back to Holt Hall for dinner ...

More instalments later ....