This week Willows started their session by listening to the story of ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’. We talked about how the different animals had made tracks in the snow as they moved about outside, just like the animals in the story. The children also shared that they had made tracks in the snow when it fell in December.
The class set off outside into the wind, creating animal foot prints all around their outside area. After watching how to create footprints with stencils, sieves and flour; it was brilliant to see how engaged they were with having a go independently.
Some children then went on to create clay footprint impressions and learned to identify badger, fox and deer footprints, by counting the marks of the footprints.
Willows had been spotting birds and feeding them when it snowed at the end of last year, so this week they created their own bird feeders with pine cones. Developing their gross and fine motor skills as they worked, the children covered the cones with lard and dipped them in seeds, before choosing which tree branches they wanted to hang them from.
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.
Then the children played independently, making up games, running around in the wind and continuing to play with the flour, stencils and animal identification sheets.
The children then all played a game of ‘Spirit of the Forest’. They each chose to be an animal and then a bird and had to run and dodge, turning into a tree if they got tagged.
After the children were inside and dry, they held Stick Man in turn, and shared what they had enjoyed about their session. It was great to hear such good thoughts and witness such great listening skills.
“I liked making prints with the clay”
“I liked using the flour…the deer print is my favourite
“I liked playing the game, I was a woodpecker and I was really fast”
“I liked going in the puddle on the running mile….and making foot prints with flour”.
“I liked playing with my friends…I was a blackbird”
“I liked making the bird feeder and the flour and the clay and everything!”
