In glorious sunshine, Goodgym Newcastle teamed up with Living Woods and Earthwatch, to collect data from the Westerhope Tiny Forest, with the help from some local school Year 5 children.

There were around 18 pupils who were split into four groups; that were led by GG, LW, EW members. We had the children identify a tree, decide if was alive, measure the distance to the closest part of the enclosing fence, measure it's highest point, measure the stem's diameter, and also count the number of stems coming out of the ground. We did this for five trees. Once this was all collected, the pupils became mini beast spotters, scouring between the trees to see what was lurking around - which was mainly spiders and ground beetles!

No sooner had we said goodbye and thank you to the first team of mini scientists, another group came along to go through the same exercises.

It was lovely to see the enthusiasm and team work that all the pupils showed. They really excelled in this biology class and understood the tree of life.

Sadly the GGer had to depart back to work before the third and last group of pupils arrived, but it was an extremely satisfying few hours :-)