A cold fog had arrived by the time we were wrapped up warm and prepared for the woods, the children showed how they had gained the skills to be increasingly independent with their self care and organisation of their belongings.
This week we spent along time engaging in activities with all of the fallen leaves. We talked about adjectives as they chatted and how they can be used to described the experience of their environment.
“ Kicking through piles of leaves is really satisfying”…….”the grass is really squidgy because of all the water…I think it is because it has rained so much”
Along the way the children demonstrated their child led imagination and creative skills as they all created something with piles of leaves. Some made nests, and some groups of children worked together to make a soft pile to jump in, or as a bed. “It isn’t really very comfy!”
The class topic is ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ this term. The children remembered the song they had all learned last session when we got to the bridge and joined in with the action song ‘Tony Chestnut’. They showed their skill at playing creatively with music as they sped the song up whist singing!
They then used their imagination to create rain, snow and leaf fall, throwing handfuls of leaves off the bridge and describing what they observed as the leaves fell down to the track below.
The children had a go at using string and tarps independently to create shelters and used their skills at using equipment as they tied and pegged out the shelters and came up with ideas such as selecting the right sized sticks to sweep the leaves out of the floor of their dens and collecting moss….” To make it all nice and soft and cosy.”
The collaborative skills the children developed this week were team work in creating dens.
They demonstrated their knowledge of estimation with measurements as they selected sticks to be poles to prop up the roof of one of their dens.
We explored a fallen tree and the children were really engaged in looking at how many growth rings of the Oak tree they could count….they got to 79 and then estimated that it was over 200 years old!
Their imaginative skills came into play soon after, as they used the timber which had been chain sawed to create their own tools…saws, axes
The impact of Forest School can be seen through the skills, 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.
