Owls set off for the woods in the week of the Lunar new year.
The class have been learning about the story of ‘The Great Race’ in which the order of the animals of the Chinese Lunar New Year are determined. This year is the year of the rabbit.
The Owls played a game of ‘Fox and Rabbit’. They got into pairs and the fox had to chase the rabbit, until they were ‘safe’ in the burrow. The class showed good listening skills and were agile and quick with their moving around the woodland during the game.
The class learned about how to identify animals by their tracks and used flour, sieves and stencils to create some tracks on the woodland floor. They also had a go at moving like rabbits, to try to create their distinctive track marks and learn about how rabbits move.
The children had a go at putting up the hammock again- this time independently. It was great fun swinging and twisting the hammock under themselves and hanging upside down in it!
Then there was time to explore and play in the woodland. Lots of the class independently built dens together. Some children had disturbed the leaves n the woodland floor and had discovered some shoots growing. They carefully swept away more and discovered the beginnings of the growth of the bluebell carpet. They talked about looking at the development of the growth next session and whether the bluebells would be flowering or not.
This week some of the children developed their tool skills, by starting with using peelers to peel the bark from hazel. Once the children had shown an understanding of safe tool use, some moved onto using knives to start to carve with. They had a go at peeling bark, sharpening the ends of sticks and some started to create patterns on their work.
The Impact of Forest School for the children is the knowledge the children have gained from the Forest School experience.
The impact can be seen through the skills, tools used, art and craft activities, observations and knowledge of the fruit, plants trees in relation to the seasons and the skills involved in learning how to play Forest School games.
The class finished the session with a game of 1,2,3 change tree and then all had a go at climbing onto (and jumping off) the fallen tree on the edge of the woods.
A huge thank you to the parent volunteers who came and supported the children so brilliantly and got involved in all of their play and supported their use of tools and equipment.
