Linking to their learning journey of ‘Amazon Adventures’, this week the class discussed the comparison of the canopy and the understory of the Amazonian rainforests and the forests in England. They shared their knowledge of animals which live in the canopy of the Amazon forests and the animals here, including birds.
Using toy birds, Maples learnt to recognise some indigenous British birds by their plumage and bird calls. Each of the children then created their own birds from card and pastels. They were beautiful and are up on the Forest School display board at school if you want to take a look.
In the Forest school area there was lots of fantastic nest building from hay and sticks, which the class then placed in the canopy of the trees on the school site. Some children gathered acorns to place in the nests as eggs.
Once out of the rain under the shelter, Maples continued to practise their fire lighting skills this week; recalling the skills practised from their last 2 sessions. They showed great perseverance with trying to create sparks to ignite their fire and showed good peer to peer support; demonstrating how to use fire strikers and encouraging each other with the challenge. Once the fire was going the children heated water in the kettle to make a hot chocolate, to warm them on the chilly afternoon. Some individuals were great at preparing the cups and stirring the drinks for everyone.
Then there was time to explore and play in the woodland. Maples showed particular interests in physical risks and challenges. They spent a long time moving large pieces of wood to create a bridge across the pool of water created by the rainfall. They were very interested in digging to create a channel to divert the flow of the water into the ditch.
Part of the Forest School experience is about risk and challenge and taking responsibility for their individual choices and actions. The children are asked to consider how the weather affects them and the environment and the choices they make about their play in the wet and muddy areas of the Forest School site.
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.
