On the way to the woods, Willow Class played a game of ‘Owl eyes’, where they had to hide in the reeds in the meadow without being seen. Whist hiding, the children noticed that there were many spiders on the ground scurrying around. The children talked about different flowers and trees along the route to the woods. They spotted bluebells, dandelions and wood anemones. They noticed the new leaf growth and some had a go at tasting dome wild food; dandelion petals and the new leaf tips from hawthorn trees. “It tastes a bit like spinach” .The children had a challenge of finding the tallest dandelion flower and had a good time comparing their lengths and measuring them against each other.
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.
This week Willow class went to our ‘Children’s Forest’ site, and planted and tended the trees that they have been involved in planting over the past 3 years. There was lots of time spent digging and exploring the mud, worms and woodlice. It was good to see the children turn taking with the tools for digging and also the mallets to hammer in the supporting tree steaks. This week Willow class planted horse chestnut trees grown from the conkers from the tree in the playground, and an oak tree and a hawthorn. They talked about the importance of trees to the environment and the benefit of nature for the world.
The children had a go at creating textured metal labels for the trees to be able to identify them in the future. They used pens to draw in reverse to create writing, illustrations and textured patterns and threaded the tags and tied them to trees. They pulled grasses out from under tree guards and replaced any broken rabbit guards around the hedgerow plants. It is great to see such involvement and energy from the children with the emerging woodland. At the end of their session each of the class imagined an animal which they thought would live in the woodland in the future. They then shouted out the animal names, filling their forest with creatures as we left for the end of the day. Well done Willow class!
