We spent the first part talking about risk assessments and the things the children can do to make sure they are safe when learning about fire. The class learned about ‘red dragon, green dragon’ as a way of communicating to each other about whether they were moving around the fire area safely. ‘Green dragon’ is around the outside of the log circle safely and ‘red dragon’ is to remind people when they step into the circle, it is not a safe place.
The wood was stacked together, from thick to thin, to lay a fire, which they then placed their sparks upon. Then the class used a fire striker to ignite cotton wool from a spark.
The children worked in small groups, sharing fire strikers and equipment. It was fantastic to observe the Foxes developing skills of patience, resilience, focus, perseverance and encouragement to each other. So many of the children were successful at independently starting a fire by the end of the session.
Once the fire was going the class went and picked dandelions. They spent a long time collecting and comparing the lengths of them, estimating which stems were longest and even got some metre rules to measure accurately. Foxes washed the dandelions to make sure they were free from dirt and bugs and then pulled the petals to add to some pancake mixture. The clean dandelions were then dipped in batter and put in the frying pan and cooked. Delicious dandelion pancake lollipops!
The class then learned about extinguishing the fire, by pouring a cup of water on the fire and sharing what they had enjoyed about the session.
There was time to explore the field and they really enjoyed playing in the willow dome.
Some of the class went and filled pots with soil and planted some cornflower and sunflower seeds. They labelled them and took them back to their classroom to nurture over the coming weeks.
At the end of the session the Foxes class had a game of ‘fox and rabbit’ and had to work together as a team by creating a circular ‘warren’ to protect the rabbit from not getting tagged by the fox.
