Pupils from across the county are getting the opportunity to travel back in time to the Stone Age as part of a popular outdoor education course.

The Stone Age Experience is a new outdoor activity managed by Nottinghamshire County Council at Brackenhurst Environmental Education Centre, which has already attracted 20 schools and 620 pupils to take part in its first year — including from a Skegby school that has praised the initiative.

The centre is now launching a further outdoor activity, called It’s Not Rocket Science, where pupils can be a rocket scientist for a day trying out a range of scientific experiments.
The sessions at the centre in Southwell are funded through individual schools and voluntary contributions from parents and carers.

Coun Tracey Taylor, vice-chairman of the Children and Young People’s Committee at the council, said: “These sessions extend the classroom to an outdoor environment, which helps to provide a wonderful learning experience for school children to explore two exciting subjects.

“We hope that It’s Not Rocket Science can be as popular as the Stone Age Experience has already been in its first year.”

The activities, aimed at Key Stage Two pupils aged from seven to 11, help schools to ensure they are meeting topics and subject areas that form part of the curriculum.

In the Stone Age Experience, pupils become a tribe of hunter gatherers for the day and go back to 2000 BC for a stimulating, hands-on activity session learning what life was like in prehistoric Britain.

Dressed in costume, their first task is to build shelters against the weather.

Other activities include creating a clay talisman (pictured) to ward off evil spirits, the chance to practice cave painting skills on the centre’s ‘cave wall’ to create their own hunting story, and taking part in a woodland orienteering course to find clues about what pre-historic people ate.

Nathan Stone, a teacher at St Andrew’s C of E Primary School, Skegby, said: “We found the event extremely useful in bringing what we had learnt about prehistoric people over the course of our topic to life.

“The children were extremely engaged all day and particularly loved taking home their medallions.

“The day was really well run and the children got into the spirit of travelling back in time.”

In It’s Not Rocket Science, groups of pupils will spend time outside learning about forces, electricity and sustainability.

They will investigate forces through simple air/water rockets and learn about the science behind getting a rocket to take flight through comparing the amount of water needed and the angle of the rocket.

The young scientists will work in teams to measure the correct amount of rocket fuel, assemble their rocket for flight and predict what will happen when the rockets take off on the firing range.

As part of another activity, they will learn about how electricity is generated, and about other sustainable sources of energy.

Pupils will make and test their own wind turbines to see which one makes the most electricity to see who wins the Sustainable Superstar certificate.