We have had so much fun the past 2 weeks at Forest School.  Chinese whispers is a great game to help improve our listening skills and we loved playing it around the fire circle.  We then identified some of the trees that are in our wonderful school grounds including the woodland walk – we found sycamore, hazel, ash and maple to name but a few.  We played a fun game called ‘Insect’ where we needed to hunt down some insects and let everyone else know we had found one by yelling ‘INSECT’ as loud as we could.  Thys led onto some interesting conversations about what is unique about insects – they have three pairs of jointed legs, segmented bodies, an exoskeleton, one pair of antennae, and (usually) one or two pairs of wings.

Some craft activities included making dragon flies from using sycamore seeds in their wings and also learning how to whittle hazel with Emily.   She taught us how to use loppers to cut the hazel, and then whittle the bark off with peelers, safely within our ‘blood bubbles’ and soon everyone was cracking on.  Inspired by Harry Potter, there were many wands made and then woollen handles added.  I can’t wait to see where they take their whittling skills this week as they can apply their skills, be creative and make whatever they would like.

Froglets and a baby newt were caught during pond dipping, the muddy kitchen was open with wonderful delicacies and of course, one of the Forest Schooler’s favourites, fire lighting.  We cut up apples and dipped them in sugar and cinnamon before cooking them in the fire making sure we used the respect position.  These were really tasty! We made some giant bubbles – this took a lot of patience and resilience!

We are all looking forward to our double session (11 and 12)  on Wednesday morning – but we cannot believe that this will be our last session.  It certainly is true – time flies when you are having fun.  We’ve all, including the adults, have had such fun this term.