We started today’s session by looking at how well our seedlings are growing as well as our potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries and sugar snap peas. We know our peas were put in a little late and aren’t doing as well as they could be, but it’s still fun seeing the occasional pod! Some mini beasts are obviously enjoying our potato leaves but it’s ok - the ladybird larvae are on the case and helping us by looking for aphids to eat. If you look closely you will see ladybird larvae on the potato leaves and sacks. 

Following on from last week, we looked for more ladybird larvae as Miss Brimble had spotted some were changing into pupae. We were very excited to see lots of these. We read a story called ‘Are you a ladybird?’ by Judy Allen. It tells us about the ladybird’s lifecycle and we learnt some ladybird facts. 

We talked about why gardeners ‘dead head’ flowers and a group did some of this. We then got to use the petals in the water kitchen. 

Some of us had great fun being a bit daring today with our climbing and jumping skills! (Don’t panic adults- we were being watched carefully!)

The seeds we planted last week with Mrs Flemming have sprouted! Today we also planted some mixed lettuce and earthed up our potatoes for the last time this season. Hopefully the next thing with the potatoes (apart from watering) will be to pull them up and cook them!

Two of the children spotted a ladybird larvae. They had been talking about this in class earlier in the week. We spotted a few more around our veg patch.

What a busy session!! Today we have done lots of gardening. Mrs Flemming brought in some seeds and small plants. We have planted radish, rocket and lamb’s lettuce as well as some cosmos. After we planted we had to water too. Our planting group were lucky enough to find enough sugar snap peas for them to pick 1 each. Miss Brimble was impressed that everybody was keen to try them! 

We have been minibeast searching and answering questions about them, having fun in the water kitchen with the creations looking good enough to eat and drink, as well as our usual fun with the ball run etc.

We have had fun today talking about mini beasts and their habitats. We went on a mini beast hunt and tried to look at different features of the mini beasts. We also did some capacity work, estimating how many tubs it would take to fill another tub. The water kitchen was popular today too. 

As we have been doing lots of mini beast hunting, our last session was a lovely surprise as we opened our box from the ‘Learning Through Landscape’ nature grant. We had lots of lovely things to help pollinators and do mini beast hunts. It was very exciting!

In class we have been learning about seed dispersal. We told Miss Brimble the different ways seeds can ‘travel’. We remembered all the ones we had learnt! We looked for seeds in the copse. Miss Brimble showed us where some chestnut trees were starting to grow. We don’t know if those ‘seeds’ are from squirrels or us using conkers and sweet chestnuts in the copse!

We went on a snail hunt because Mrs Nolan needed some for her lesson in Ahlberg Class! We had lots of ‘Off you go’ time because we love being creative and making our own things. Some of us used the collecting pots to collect beetles. We tried to identify them using an insect ‘id’ book. We talked about how important bees are to our world and learnt some bee facts. Did you know a bee’s brain is the size of a poppy seed? We looked at poppy seeds - they are tiny! We said we needed to plant flowers to help the bees - luckily Miss Brimble had some wild flower seeds for us to plant just outside the copse. We learnt how to rake the soil, scatter the seeds, cover them with soil, pat it down and of course water them. We are really hoping they will grow! 

We found some charcoal and used it to draw. We had the binoculars to look for birds. We tried to identify them in our bird book. Miss Brimble set us the challenge of making a trim trail where we had to go through something, climb over something as well as balance at different heights. We did a fab job. We went one better by making a slide section that we had to pull ourselves along! Fantastic teamwork Y2!

We have been looking at the blossom on our fruit trees as well as the spring flowering plants. The blossom looks amazing! We talked about how important the flowers are and how wind and insects like bees will help pollinate them, eventually the flowers will die off but the fruits will start to grow, inside the fruits will be seeds to make more trees. Edie is our official blossom photographer! 

We made an awesome ball run! Miss Brimble thinks it’s one of the longest we have ever made! We had fun with the water kitchen and making a campfire. 

1.12.20 What an egg-citing lesson!! 

What a morning! The Forest School elf has come back to visit! We didn't know he was back until we discovered he had been in the tissue box and thrown lots of tissues around the seating area and then taken the tissue box up into the tree! As if that was egg-citing enough - be warned - more 'yolks' like that to come! After 'Off you go time', Miss Brimble had lots of materials ready for our challenge. We talked about the properties of some materials and why for example cardboard or clay wouldn't be good materials for wellie boots. Miss Brimble then told us 'egg-actly' what we were going to be doing. We were going to be working in groups and would have 'a friend' to look after for the rest of the session. One that had to go with us wherever and whatever we were doing in the copse - on the swings, on the trim trail, in the bushes etc.  Each group had a new buddy to keep 'egg-stra' safe - have you guessed yet? It was an egg!!! (Not a hard boiled one either!) We had to decide which container we thought would be best to carry our buddy in as well as what we could use to keep him/her safe. We had great fun and used lots of ingenuity. Some of us chose to have lids on the carry containers, others didn't; some groups 'adapted' their packaging as they went through the session. The adults were amazed how many times our eggs 'jumped' out of their pots and didn't crack! (That wouldn't happen in the supermarket!). There were a couple of 'egg-splosions' but lots of us kept our new buddies very safe. Some of us were VERY protective! 

Our final challenge was to stand on the bench, reach as high as we could and  . . .  DROP our new best pal! Even then, some of them survived the fall. (We wanted to bring them home.) We did a fab job at choosing the materials with properties that would protect our egg from damage.

We decided these things were a good idea: having a lid; making sure material was packed all the way around the egg so it was protected on all sides; that there was plenty of material packed around the egg; there shouldn't be space in the container for the egg to roll around and making sure the packaging material was 'soft' so that it didn't bang against the egg and crack it. 

Miss Brimble said we had done an 'egg-stremely' good job today (last joke, I promise - for now!). We made so many jokes like that today, even the children started making them- it's no wonder I love Forest School!!

24.11.20 Leaf walk and umbrellas for little people.

Today we used our senses to go on a leaf walk through the copse. The leaves are lovely and dry at the moment so we listened to the noise they made as we walked through them, we also used ‘touch’ to feel the difference between surfaces as we walked, from the hardness of the path to slippery, squelchy mud and then a cushion of leaves. We used adjectives to describe toe sounds we heard.

After ‘off you go’ time, Miss Brimble gave us a challenge to make an umbrella for a ‘little person’. We talked about the properties our umbrellas would need and what we could use. We had a quick discussion about what could be the best type of leaf to use then we got into groups of 3 or 4 and were given a character to keep safe and dry for when the rain (a water sprayer) came! We had great fun making our umbrellas but more fun when we used the water sprayer to make it ‘rain’. We did a super job because all of our umbrellas worked!

17.11.20 Forest School Fun!

Making trails is not only great fun but fabulous for our balancing skills and core strength as well as encouraging confidence. It’s such great fun, even the adults (who are really just big kids at heart😉!) love to join in!! During the session we also talked about properties of materials and some of us did sawing bamboo to add to our bug hotels.

9.11.20

Some of us have noticed lots of ladybirds enjoying the warm sunshine in the last few days. We talked about how lots of mini beasts will soon hibernate over winter. To help the mini-beasts in the copse, we have made some mini-beast homes. We recycled some broken bird feeders as well as using some plastic bottles. We also finished ‘packing’ the mini-beast homes that our Nature Cadets made 18months ago! They look amazing! We hope the mini-beasts will think they are amazing too!

20.10.20    Our last session before half term!

We have had lots of apples on our trees so today we picked some, washed and peeled them, chopped them into small pieces and baked them in foil on the fire. We love to sit around the fire and smell the smoke! All of us tried the baked apples - some of us didn’t like it but some asked for more! 

We had to do things a bit differently to ‘normal’ as we couldn’t share foil packets and had to be careful with cleaning equipment but our adults were fab and did an amazing job to help us get this done in about an hour! We had great helpers going to and fro with foil packs that were ready to put on the fire.