| Clíona, Martin, Sinead (from left to right) By Clíona Ní Bhréartúin, Environmental Education Officer at Kippure Estate
We’ve just been at the Adventure Show in the RDS Dublin this weekend (20-22 May 2011) and had a great stand where we met loads of people. We were on our feet from 9am to 9pm telling everyone about our great adventure and education packages. The school tour season is about to start and will keep us very busy until the end of June. We told them about our 3 hour and 5 hour All-Adventure Days which involves our High ropes, Low ropes and Orienteering courses. We also have school tour programmes involving nature walks through our mixed woodlands. And this year we’ve developed a new package where our ecology and adventure days are theme-based – Pirate Training and Celtic Warrior Training. We are looking forward to meeting the groups that have booked these as we expect to have as much fun as the kids, talking like pirates, dressing up like pirates and teaching the children to climb the climbing wall and come down on the abseil tower, skills very important to pirating when they have to climb into ships and swing on ropes off the mast from ship to ship. And for the Celtic Warrior, think of the exploits of Na Fianna; how Fionn Mac Cumhail and his mighty Fianna knew how to use plants to bind a wound received from a sword, or to clean a wound and to heal the skin quickly. They all need to know what plants they can eat in case they get marooned on an island or they can’t find a wild boar to hunt. So all very useful and great fun! Our Field Studies for post-primary schools are going strong too. The current season for those is just finishing and for the new season September is already heavily booked; October is looking like it’s going the same way. Happy days! The change to the Leaving Cert Geography River Study topic makes it interesting this year; in fact we’ve already done loads of them since February – some teachers are very organised! So, at the moment we are keeping busy with ecology studies for 2nd to 4th years and some Transition Year Team Building days too. For post-primary schools, apart from the ropes days, we have new programmes involving map and compass skills and also bushcraft skills for those interested in fending for themselves in the wild, Bear Grylls style. |
