Clyro Church in Wales Primary School and its community came together recently to create an amazing experiences for their children and entered a Welsh heritage competition, exploring 'Wales On Our Doorstep'.
Designed to enhance the children’s sense of ‘Cynefin’, the children enjoyed activities that enriched their understanding of their locality and its heritage.
A main focus was learning about the history of Hay Castle. As part of this project, the school visited the castle and historian, Mari Fforde, helped deepen the children’s knowledge of the castle’s history. The children learnt about Matilda de Braose, a key figure in the castle’s history. Legend has it that Matilda, who was a giant, threw a rock from Hay-on-Wye and it landed in Llowes. Strangely, prior to the children’s visit to the castle, a huge rock - suspiciously like the one that Matilda threw - appeared on the school field. Gary Bowen, of WWBowen Ltd, delivered the rock and then later collected it for the children to watch. Clyro School are hugely grateful to Mr Bowen for providing them with this.
The children also worked with illustrator, Emily Hill, who created illustrations for the Matilda project and demonstrated her skills and author Catherine Barr, who spoke to the children about being a writer. She helped the children write their own versions of Matilda’s story.
Pupils also learnt about Banna Brycheiniog National Park’s Dark Sky status. Led by an expert, children, parents and staff went star-gazing in Libanus and used this experience to develop their knowledge of constellations, create artwork based on images of the skies and design products to help with light pollution.
Paul Sweeting also brought in his harp and played, Julie Lewis brought a lamb in from her farm and the children fed it, and Connie from Shepherd’s Ice Cream visited Class 1 children and they learnt how ice cream is made, and tasted some too!
The school is extremely grateful to all the members of the community who helped with this project.
Pupils then set up a parents showcase to present their work. Parents looked at all the brilliant work, and purchades seed bombs and papers and pictures to raise money for Hay Castle Trust.