Geography: Orienteering in Regent’s Park

We had such a great day in Regent’s Park today!

We were spending our day with Josh from Field Studies Council to learn all about orienteering. In our geography lesson, we have previously learned about the United Kingdom, the seas and oceans that surround us, used compass directions and have also located some London landmarks.

Today though, we were going to be taking part in more practical activities. We started off with a walk to the park, which felt like quite the tiresome journey for some of us! Once we were there we met Josh and later headed towards a big area of grass. Here, some maps were placed under cones and we spent some time studying what we could see on these maps – they were all very different! Some were tube maps, one was of Regent’s Park and another one was of an area didn’t recognise but we did notice that there was a river! Josh then told us some different scenarios such as “I’m lost in London and I’m in a car”, we then had to run to the map that we thought he would use in that situation. Another scenario was about being on the train that runs underground. This activity helped to familiarise ourselves with different types of maps, and we are beginning to understand when we would use them.

After this, there were four cones put down and we then had to guess which of these cones was the compass point for ‘south’. As this was a guess to begin with, none of us initially went to the correct cone (apart from our teacher… not that it’s a competition!) but once we were familiar with the location of south, we were then able to locate north. We then played a few games to locate east and west, and then were challenged to find north east and south west.

Once we felt more comfortable with the compass directions and we knew a little bit more about maps, Josh tasked us with creating our own maps with a range of natural resources around us. We thought about the things that we could use, from sticks and leaves to grass and feathers (if we could find any) and we then used a white sheet as our canvas. We could create a map of anything we wanted, as long as we could explain what the features were and we also had to think about explaining things using our compass directions. We worked in groups and, with some adult support, came up with some great ideas! Lots of us used Regent’s Park and the map that we had seen earlier for inspiration but one group created a map of the path that they could see nearby. We all worked together brilliantly and were really resourceful too. Before lunch, Josh showed us a sheet with square grids marked out. We saw numbers along the bottom such as (01, 02…) and the same type of numbers up the side. Josh then told us that these are called coordinates and explained to us how we would use them: we go along the bottom first (along the corridor) and then up (up the stairs) to see where the points meet. The points will meet at the bottom left corner of a square (or south west of a square) and that would be the square that you would look at to locate something.

After our map making, it was time for lunch, which we were all really excited about! We had a lovely time with our friends and we were very grateful that it hadn’t rained too much (the adults were very grateful for this too!). In the afternoon, we travelled north in the park towards a fountain and we then had to see if we could find any animals within the marble. We spotted a lion and a cow/bull and we then thought about the compass directions that the animals were facing. We found out that the lion was facing east and we then thought about what this meant about the way that the cow was facing (which was north). Josh then asked us which way north west would be, and lots of us knew! We then travelled north east towards a patch of grass, which was quite wet and muddy but we put on a brave face and trudged through the mud to get to our destination. Once we were here, Josh got out a huge parachute and gave us all coordinates to remember. He then would shout out two coordinates and the two people would gave to run under the parachute and swap places. This was a great listening activity for all of us and we eventually were able to swap 4-5 of us in one go!

We then travelled back through the park and Josh asked us to collect four different leaves, and they had to be as dry as possible. He then explained that we would be using these leaves to create our own compasses. We would put our leaves under our sheet, one at a time, and then rub a crayon over the top to create a point on our compass. Lots of us then also labelled this with N, S, E and W too. After this, Josh showed us a map of somewhere and asked us where it was. Thankfully lots of us recognised it as the United Kingdom! We could then tell Josh which parts of the map were England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We noticed that the map looked different to the one that we have seen in school, as it didn’t have any lines to separate the countries. We then had to take a crayon and colour in the parts of the map that we believed were the different countries. We impressed our teacher with how much of this we remembered!

After this, it was time for us to head back to school and once we were back, it was home time! Thankfully, this is when we saw most of today’s rain, we were very lucky that the weather stayed fairly dry for us whilst we were in the park. We did lots of walking today and will definitely sleep well tonight!

We would like to say a big thank you to Josh from Field Study Council for all of his hard work on today’s trip. We learned a lot and had a great time doing so!

We would also like to say a huge thank you to all of the parents who came to help us with our trip today, you were all so helpful and it was so kind of you to give up your own time to be with us today. We are very grateful for all that you do for us. A final thank you to Mrs Hope for accompanying us on this trip too!

What was your favourite part of our geography trip to Regent’s Park?