A snapshot of some of the activities we have done this year.

Our last Forest School session (Easter 23)

Doing what we love - lots of fun whilst collaborating with others and using our imaginations. 

We have created stories, chocolate factories, planted wildflower seeds, strengthened muscles and had fun with our friends - with hot chocolate to finish! 

We have also been busy over the last few sessions making hanging clay birds with Mrs Hughes.

Children’s Mental Health Week - Let’s Connect.

We did some team work activities all about keeping connected. In order to achieve each task we had to collaborate, talk to each other (not yell/shout) and give good explanations so others understood our instructions. 

We had to keep hold of the rope and make a given shape. We started with a circle and that was tricky!! Everyone was so excited to start they pulled in lots of different directions, forgetting to collaborate and talk it through. We ended up with a bit of a mess, not a circle! Miss Brimble asked us what went wrong and what we needed to do to make it right. We tried again and we did much better. We made a circle. Then we tried a square and triangle. Each time we got better and better at listening to one idea at a time and following clear instructions. After this Miss Brimble asked us to connect by joint hands. We weren’t allowed to break our chain. We had to pass a hoop along our chain. We learnt from the first few people who tried and bit by bit we got better at helping the person next to us. There were lots of giggles and cheers as we achieved our goals😁.

Good job everyone👍. 

17.01.23 It’s turned colder❄️.

Today when we went outside there had been a frost overnight. We haven’t had many of those this winter so far!

We used the opportunity to find frosty leaves and watch what happens when we press our warm finger onto the frost. We also found the water tray was iced over. This led to a VERY important discussion about safety around frozen water. Sadly, we had heard on the news channels recently about 4 children who had lost their lives after falling through ice into the cold water below. Lots of our children had heard about it. We used our water tray as a lake/pond to show that although the ice looked ‘safe’, when it starts to crack and break up it can become dangerous, especially if we were skating in the middle of it. I demonstrated by pressing down on part of the ice.

After such a serious discussion and an important lesson learnt, it was time to be able to enjoy the ice safely. We felt it, described it, carried it, broke it and painted it.

10.01.23

It’s not really the best time of year to be looking at habitats and what creatures we can find but as that’s our class topic, we had a go. Due to the weather being so mild, it was surprising what we found. Lots of worms, woodlice and slugs and even a beetle. We talked about how lots of the creatures liked damp places and why. We also talked about how important it is we don’t break/disturb their habitats and that if we pick them up, we handle them with care, putting them back in a habitat they like, ideally exactly where they came from. Did you know a woodlouse can live their whole life under the same log? 

Christmas Treat - making s'mores on the fire.

6.12.22

Carrot peeling

22.11.23

8.11.22

We have been learning about squirrels.

Did you know ...

squirrels are 'diurnal' (they are awake during the day)

a squirrel 'nest' is called a drey?

squirrels have good eyesight and a good sense of smell - they can tell if a nut is good to eat just by smelling it!

a squirrel can land safely from heights of about 9 metres!

A grey squirrel can leap more than 6 metres!

We learnt lots more about them. We measured 6 metres. We tried to jump as far as we could but we couldn't jump anywhere near 6m!

We love watching the squirrels in the copse. We put up a new squirrel feeder. 

1.11.22

Autumn fun!

We have been busy tidying up the playground and collecting leaves for the leaf compost bin.

We also did some den building and leaf shape cutting.

18.10.22

Misty Spider Webs.

Today started quite misty. The drops of mist hung on the spider webs and showed them up brilliantly. We looked closely at the shape of the webs. Spiders spin a silk thread to make their webs. This silk is very strong for it's size. It is even stronger than steel! 

We had a go at drawing chalk spider webs on black paper. We think they look really good!

We also picked some of the apples from our fruit trees. We were able to eat them at snacktime!

11.10.23

It won't be long and lots of the minibeasts will be starting to hibernate. We needed to refill our bug hotels.

We poked the pith out of some elder to make hollow tubes for the mini beasts to crawl into for the winter. We filled our bug hotels with these tubes, pinecones and bundles of twigs. 

09.22

Enjoying being back at Forest School.