On Thursday 25th April, Maple Class set off on a beautiful but still chilly sunny afternoon for Forest School. The children were given a Spring ‘scavenger hunt’ sheet to look for all sorts of different things on their walk along the Forest Way from things that crawls to different shaped leaves!
The class worked really well gathering all sorts of items, helping each other out by sharing their finds. They found Buttercups for ‘find something yellow’, which they used to hold under each other chins to see if they all ‘liked butter!’
In the hunt for something long there were many sticks gathered, which got longer and longer as the walk progressed. In the end the sticks needed to be dragged all the way to Forest School!
Once there, they talked about what the class may have noticed during their walk and in the woods that was a little different to the last time that they were there:
“bluebells are everywhere”,
“the trees are covered in green”.
As it was the start of a new term, time was taken to remember how to be safe when at the fire circle, that they need to go round the outside if they want to move from one side to the other but also to shout ‘red dragon’ if they see someone walking through the circle.
The Impact of Forest School for the children is the knowledge they gain from the whole experience. This can be seen through the skills gained, the tools used, art and craft activities, observations and knowledge of fruit, plants and trees in relation to the seasons and the skills involved in learning how to play forest school games.
Many of the children chose to go and check on the bridge that they had created last time they were at Forest School, but unfortunately discovered that it was no longer there. They were not too concerned by this as it meant they could again work together as a team to gather lots of new pieces of wood to create a new bridge. Some children then cautiously tested strength of their bridge by laying down on it!
Other members of the class chose to practice their balancing abilities on the slack line, and were tested a little more when the line was gently wobbled by Dormouse.
The session finished with the children sitting around the fire circle and taking it in turns to listen to what each other had enjoyed about forest school.
“the stream”
“playing with my friends”
“looking for things”
