Virtual Visit from The Canal & River Trust

A few weeks back I saw something pop up on Facebook about the Canal and River Trust and their children’s section of the website. I had a look around and there is so much on there that I knew it was going to be a great resource for us.

You can view the Canal & River Trust Learning Resources here. There is a lot included on here including a really quite fab STEM section as well as a really great activity pack full of ideas of things to do to achieve the Canal & River Trust badge.

I placed an order for the badges as well as contacting the team to make a booking for a virtual visit from the Canal & River Trust, which took place earlier this week.

Virtual Visit

The visit was held via zoom; we are fortunate that one of our home ed group members has a zoom account that we are able to make use of. We met for around 15 minutes before David from the Canal and River Trust joined and we talked briefly about the canals near us. We are on the Peak Forest Canal and another friend is on the Bolton, Bury, and Manchester canal and a third on the Calder canal.

When David arrived at the zoom meeting I introduced him and he then led the session.

Zoom can be quite hard to manage sometimes but David did an excellent job; he engaged all the children and made sure that they all had the opportunity to answer the questions he was posing to them. The talk was all about enjoying the canals and how to stay safe and lasted around 30 minutes. The children really enjoyed it and were really engaged when they were spotting the hazards on and around the canal.

The visit and the badges are provided free of charge however the group did make a donation to the Canal and River Trust to thank them for their time and input and I have joined as a Canal and River Trust friend.

Following up with My Children

We followed up the session by looking at this history of canals in general but I plan to do quite an extended project with my children on this, and I’ll open it up to friends if they want to join us too. I plan to use the explorers’ section for inspiration. We walk along the canal a lot and I think it’s a great way for the children to get a better understanding of how the local area developed and changed during the last few hundred years and to think about how it might change further.

We plan to visit some of the museums when circumstances allow which I am sure they will really enjoy. A favourite for a long time now has been Portland Basin.

Whilst Portland Basin is not specifically about the canal, it does sit alongside the canal and explores the changes in the area over a period of time.