Year 4 Adventures to the Climbing Wall

“I’m going on an adventure!” These are the excited words of Bilbo Baggins as he leaves the shire for the first time in ‘The Hobbit.’  These words and similar have been echoing around Year 4 over the last few weeks as we have been delving into our topic, ‘Adventurers and Explorers.’  Although we have spent more time studying the likes of Neil Armstrong, Christopher Columbus and Falcon Scott, Bilbo Baggins is a great example of the type of explorers we can all be.  We cannot all be the first to achieve something like going to the moon or discovering unknown places, but we can be adventurous by trying new things, challenging ourselves and overcoming our fears.
This was the theme of the Year 4 Trip to VietClimb this week, an indoor climbing wall where the children got the opportunity to try something they very likely had never tried before.  At first some children felt nervous. “I am scared,” was a phrase heard quite a few times.  However, every single child gave it a go, discovered they could climb and pushed themselves to go a bit higher and a bit further than the time before.  At the end there were complaints of sore fingers but everyone had big smiles on their faces because of the sense of achievement they felt. It seems as if some of our children have spider blood running through their veins as many were able to climb and scramble along the walls like giant spiders.
Hopefully this is the first step in being adventurous for the children, learning how if they challenge themselves they can achieve anything they want and who knows maybe make great discoveries like, Columbus, Armstrong, Scott and even Baggins.

Mr Paul Wild

Year 4 teacher and Science Leader