Forest School 31.10.17

The children in Honeybees and Puffins had a fantastic first experience in the woods and what a super group of children they were.

We started off today’s session by exploring the woodland floor, looking for interesting things we could put in a cauldron.  A witch’s broomstick had snapped and we needed a spell to fix it again.  The children found all sorts of things including feathers, pine needles, pine cones, oak leaves, pieces of bark and even a spider (it did manage to escape).  We learnt lots of new vocabulary in the process and found out lots about the woodland.

Next we read a story called ‘It’s Not A Stick and the children used their imaginations to find their own ‘not-a-sticks’.  These included violins, pencils, hat stands, dragon’s jaws, bows and arrows and tractors forks.

During lunch around the fire, we tried naming as many different trees as we could and learnt new words ‘deciduous’ and ‘evergreen’.  After a hot chocolate we split into groups and were set different challenges.  One group built a den and learnt how to build a frame before adding lighter sticks to the structure.  They had to compare different lengths of branches in order to decide where to place their sticks.

Another group used potato peelers to whittle lengths of willow and then cook bread dough on the camp fire.  They watched carefully as their dough changed colour and became hard.  They also learnt how to safely peel willow away from the body.

The third group read a story called ‘Can’t You Sleep Little Bear’.  They then had a go a building/digging bear caves and some even decorated a lantern using sticky back plastic and leaves.  We put tealights in them to make their caves glow.

It’s been a wonderful first week and next week we hope to build on everything we’ve learnt about woodland environments.

     

 

 

 

3 Comments

on “Forest School 31.10.17
3 Comments on “Forest School 31.10.17
  1. Another marvellous session. We are very grateful to all parents who helped on the day, got the clothes to kit out their child and let use use their woods.
    Thank you for my invite. I will most certainly join you on one of your days.

  2. Learning outdoors in this woodland environment really brings Science to life. I wonder how many evergreen and deciduous trees you will be able to name after all your sessions?

  3. This looks wonderful! So many different skills learned by the children, using lots of interesting natural materials. I’m looking forward to joining forest school in a few weeks’ time!

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