Posts

Rebooting

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Term 2 is always hectic! Whether Forest School is attached to an actual school or an independent business, there is a lot happening around it. Community-wise, there are events like Halloween, Bonfire Bight, Remembrance, Diwali, and Advent to draw on or embrace. Season-wise, Autumn begins to fade quickly, there are leaves and seeds and nuts to acknowledged, work with, or even relocate, harvesting fades away, hibernation preps all around, caring for wildlife becomes more evident. Weather-wise, it's a roller coaster of the bizarre and unpredictable! It does get colder but fluctuates, the wind brings in storms that damage, the clouds dump seemingly endless amounts of water onto sites, and frost brings a bite to the air. Maybe even snow! It's a couple of months of adjustment from a milder, brighter Summer/Autumn transition to the spiralling out of colourful Autumn into a stark and sparkling Winter. The only issue the passing of time regularly throws up is clothing! In September the ...

Term 1 2024

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Our Forest School life has been busy - ridiculously BUSY! Keeping the weekly Blog going became impossible, so now we are at the end of Term 1, we're going to recap everything that's happened since the summer holidsys ended, and how we continue to juggle school, community, and training, whist being as child focused and child led as possible!  After a Summer 'resting' our grounds had grown 4m brambles, 2 metre stinging nettles, and tunnels in the bushes grew and merged closed! When September dawned we had a huge amount of site maintenance to do before we could even consider any site development! Once 60% of it was complete it was safe enough to hold sessions there and Chartham Pupils started their trek outdoors. This year we're trialling a different timetable for providing them session. In Term 1, years 1, 3, & 5 have had Forest School. We are a two-form entry school so both classes in the year group are out at the same time, but on different sites with different ...