Chestnuts set off in groups to try and find everything on their spring scavenger hunt. They worked well together and found something that crawls, something red and so much more.
Half the class then made their way to the pond by the vegetable patch for some pond dipping. When talking about what they may catch most of the class were convinced they would be catching some fish. The children crouched down to dip the nets into the water – “I have something wiggly in my net”. Everything they caught was carefully put into a tray of pond water. The children then used an ID sheet to work out what they had caught; between them they had a Rams-horn snail, a few water louse and a smooth newt. The newt was in clear water so they were able to look underneath at its tummy – “it has an orange spotty tummy”.
The other half of the class started to tidy Chestnuts vegetable garden. They did this by removing all the weeds and digging the soil over ready for planting. While digging they found some bulbs, these were carefully replanted.
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 gained, tools used, art and craft activities, observations and knowledge of the fruit, plants and trees in relation to the seasons and the skills involved in learning how to play Forest School games.
We then went down to the Forest School site where the children took it in turns to pond dip in the forest pond. This time they found something a little bigger and again using the ID sheet, they were able to work out that they had found a dragonfly nymph.
There was some great den building today. The children worked together to move long lengths of wood from one side of Forest School to the location of their den on the other side of the site. There was a rather large hole full of sticky mud that they had to go through to get to their den, so to make it easier they filled this hole with lumps of wood to use as stepping stones.
We finished today’s session by telling each other what we had enjoyed about Forest School today.
“finding the big thing in the pond”
“looking in the pond”
