Before the session, the class listened to a bit of the story of ‘Billy and the Minpins’, by Roald Dahl, linking with their learning journey topic this year. They heard the chapter where Billy climbs a very tall tree and then had a go on the trees in the forest school area themselves.
Some of the group used small logs and wooden pieces to create their own miniature Forest School area on the table under the shelter.
The Maples class continued to practise their fire lighting skills this week, recalling the skills practised from their last session. They helped sort the sticks into different sizes to start the fire with. Once the fire was going, the children heated water to make a hot chocolate, to warm them on the chilly afternoon. Some individuals were great at preparing the cups and drinks for everyone.
Then there was time to explore and play in the woodland. The Maples class showed particular interests in physical risks and challenges. They showed this through tree climbing, digging, stick creativity, swinging and by using the slack line.
There was some turn taking and balancing on the slack line. It was good to see the children taking risks and challenging themselves with working out how to balance, how to work out the best way of moving along the line carefully and how to turn take and share the space with each other.
Part of the Forest School experience is about risk and challenge and taking responsibility for their individual choices and actions. And also about how the weather affects them and the environment.
There was lots of ice around and the children explored the ice with great interest. They tried melting it, breaking it up into pieces and discussed the thickness of it. They really loved the bubbles inside the ice and were creative with using it as an ingredient along with mud and acorns in their mud kitchen. When the hot chocolate had been made, some took the pans to the fire to see how quickly the ice melted in pans on the fire. It is great to see their enthusiasm with scientific enquiry and changing states of matter.
Some of the class created some bird feeders using threaded cereal onto pipe cleaners and hung them around the Forest School area.
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.
