This week the class helped to transport some woodchip down to the shelter area to help combat the wet, muddy ground. They worked together with spades, wheelbarrows and buckets to carry and spread out the woodchip which created a better surface for everyone using the site. It looks fantastic and has made a great difference to everyone at Park Mead who will use the space – well done Maples!
Part of the Forest School experience is about risk and challenge and taking responsibility for their individual choices and actions. We talked about how to assess risk and how to use tools, techniques and the Forest School area as safely as we could.
Maples continued to practise their fire lighting skills this week; recalling the skills practised in their last 2 sessions. They showed great perseverance when 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 alight, the children cooked some egg free dandelion pancake lollipops by dipping them in batter and frying them on the fire. It was good to see the children trying new and unfamiliar foraged food.
Then there was time to explore and play in the woodland. Maples showed particular interests in physical risks and challenges.
Maples enjoyed getting messy in the mud kitchen and digging channels for any excess rainwater to flow away.
They planted two more sapling trees along the roped border of the Forest school space.
The children continued playing with the toy birds in the Forest School area and spent a long time creating animals and creatures out of clay.
Now that spring has finally sprung, the class noticed how the plants have really grown and spent some time hiding. This lead to a game of ‘Owl Eyes’, where the children had 10 seconds to hide and then see if they could remain camouflaged and quiet enough so that they couldn’t be seen.
We finished with a game of ‘Fox and Rabbit’, where the children had to work together to be a ‘warren’, defending the rabbit from its fox predator.
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.
