The class started their afternoon by learning a song about Spring with actions.
‘Spring is here’ said the bumblebee
‘How do you know?’ said the old oak tree
‘Because I saw a daffodil,
Dancing with the fairies on the windy hill’
The children then split into two groups and one set off to weed their school garden beds and plant daffodils ready for next year. They worked brilliantly together and were very excited to find worms and small beetle larvae in the soil. They had also saved some apple pips from their snack and planted these in small pots.
“If we grow these into apple trees, we can plant them at Forest School and always have something to eat here!”
The class then made some tiny bees with alder cones and yellow string. They developed their fine motor control, by carefully winding the string around the cones, attaching a small pair of wings to them. Chestnuts took their bees to the vegetable garden to let them feed on the nectar of daffodils and even found a real bumble bee resting inside a daffodil trumpet!
Once the daffodils were planted the class set off to the Forest School area with a wheelbarrow full of weeds to compost and lots of tiny bumble bees.
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 trees in relation to the seasons and the skills involved in learning how to play Forest School games.
The rest of the afternoon saw Chestnuts following their own ideas. They really wanted to continue with the den area and spent lots of time moving large pieces of wood to place them as walls for the den. They climbed a part of the den next to the fence to look over at the surrounding fields and saw lots of crows.
This afternoon the lady bird board game was back and the children spent a long time trying to win the game, like noughts and crosses, to get three matching ladybirds in a row and block their opponents.
There was also lots of tree climbing, swinging and playing in the mud kitchen.
Some of the children found what they thought was a giant dinosaur footprint in the mud! They got very excited and went off to find some trowels to dig around it to uncover it more.
It is great to see the confidence in self-chosen activities at Forest School developing in all of the children.
