Forest Schools

We are lucky enough to have Miss Joyce in from the Liam Cooper foundation to work with Year 1 and Star Class. 

Week 1 we learnt about boundaries and keeping safe outdoors. Then, we played a pirate game where we worked in pairs. The first partner had to go and hide the treasure in the outdoor area. Then, partner two had to go search for the treasure and bring it back to base camp. We finished the session with a little game of hide and seek! It was great to explore the outdoors in our first session. 

This week we went into our Forest Schools outdoor area to complete our session. We recapped the rules and identified our base camp. Then, we went on a mini-beast hunt and found all sorts of different insects including a caterpillar and spiders. We also saw a frog near our pond. Afterwards we made some bug hotels to host the creatures we had found. It was a test of our patience, teamwork and scavenging skills. Finally, we got to look around at everyones creations. 

Year 1 started their Forest School sessions today - 8 children from Class 3 and 8 children from Class 4 (two separate sessions!). We filled the bird feeders up, fed the chickens, went on a nature trail and had hot chocolate and a biscuit! All children in Year 1 will have a weekly session for 6 weeks - there will be whittling, creating bug hotels, making a den and finishing by building a fire!

Today children from Class 3 and Class 4 went out for their second Forest School session. We talked about the leaves we looked at last week (holly and ivy) and our nature trail. Today we filled up the bird feeders and fed the chickens. We talked about the animals we could find in our wildlife area (birds, insects, frogs, snails, etc). We then talked about making our own forest creature...we then used clay to make our forest creature! We finished the session with hot chocolate and a biscuit!

We don't let the weather put us off doing our Forest School sessions! However this week the weather hasn't been good and there have been severe weather warnings with heavy rain and strong winds. So we looked at some pictures to see how our Wildlife Area looks at this time of year - very bare and little growth. However, the daffodils are starting to come through. When we are next out in our Wildlife Area we will take a few more pictures of the area to show how Spring is on it's way!

This week, the children from Class 3 and Class 4 have been out to make stick mobiles! We have fed the chickens and the wild birds and looked how the wildlife area is changing - the first daffodil has flowered! There were more birds around also - we saw a blackbird, a magpie and a seagull. We looked in the pond - but we couldn't see any frogs...yet!

Today we had our 5th Forest School session. We looked at how much the area had changed - it was very green. We could see apples, raspberries and cherries growing (they are not ready to eat yet). We went to the Outdoor Classroom and looked at where we could make dens - there were some great places. We went back to the Forest Area and then built our own den!! We fed the chickens and the birds!! We saw the tadpoles in the pond and spotted a woodlouse walking on the log - everything is growing!