Today we made claves with Rachel from the Forestry Commission. A big thank-you to Mrs Russell for helping us. We measured long pieces of wood, cut them into 20cm lengths and then made patterns with a potato peeler. Then we all played them. We hope Mrs Eggington doesn't make us play them for her.

Next we cut more wood in different lengths and tied them a hands length apart with string. We made sure the longest pieces were at the top, down to the smallest at the bottom. the smallest one kept falling off and had to be re-tied.

We made beautiful sounds ringing round the fields with our xylophones. The tallest person in each group held up the xylophones.

Rachel told us all about safety awareness. We all had to wear protective gloves when using the bow saw, and kept our hands out of the way when someone was sawing. Two people had to hold the end of the sticks to keep it steady, and we made sure when we weren't using the saw we laid it down with the teeth on the grass. We also needed to use the potato peelers away from ourselves so we didn't get cut.

When we all got together to play our instruments it was very loud, but peaceful when they were played one by one. We loved the sound of the xylophones. Some people had very light claves, and some had heavy ones so they made different sounds. We were surprised by the wood sounds but liked the tunes they made.

We found the morning great fun and a really good experience. It was really exciting. The sawing and peeling were great fun and it was a good chance to find out more about the forest. We would like to say a big thank-you to Rachel for coming in and helping us learn about the forest.

Love

Class 6