Here Comes Summer

The school year has ended. The children are no longer in 'Bubbles' and staff are retreating to find some kind of normality in an insane world after possibly the weirdest academic year ever!

Forest School celebrated the end of it all with a campfire for each bubble. Never as easy as it sounds! Shopping, collating, transporting, piling up all the equipment and the treats and activities and the kindling and wood and safety requirements...

Then ensure there's enough for three bubbles because you can't leave the fire once lit and they will be heading your way eagerly like a pupil conveyor belt!!!

I am literally exhausted - but it was fun - and the children enjoyed themselves.

Before I face a summer of trying to do some planning with no certain outlook for September from the Government, I need to steal some time to ensure we are as ready as can be for starting Forest School next term with clear expectations and the implementation for a few new 'old rules' to return to the routine.

The children have got used to Bubble life, small groups, and lots of unstructured play outside. In some cases this has led to a lot of destruction. Most of it unintended, but the woods are definitely not left as they were found. So the new school year will begin with re-learning how to:

Respect

Protect

Enjoy

Doing 16 reduced sessions a week has been a blast, but impossible to do while abiding by the Forest School ethos. 'Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time' has been slightly lost in the footfall of 120+ children daily sharing out outdoor spaces on rotation! Even the first rule of science 'Do No Harm' has been pushed to it's limits as children returned from lockdown with a lot of energy and emotion to exorcise. But the new school year will be a new starting point.

Despite this the vast majority of children have enjoyed 'Forest School', they have moved on in personal leaps and bounds from hating to get their hands wet, to wrist deep in a ponds holding newts. What one over excited bubble partially destroyed, another worked hard to fix. The good has always outweighed the disappointment.

From feeling like the lumbering 'slow one' to personal best stopwatch speeds jumping from tyre to tyre. From fear of being on the lowest widest branch of a wide Sycamore, to shimmying up a Beech and being able to talk others through the safest route up (and down).

Children who didn't want long grass tickling their legs, and hated the 'dark' beneath the thicker trees, rushed through narrow paths through bushes to the densest areas of tree cover. Those that needed to shout and run and lose as much energy as possible, sat in conversation around basecamp, whittling for an hour. The calm of being in Nature wove it's spell. Eventually no one was phased by the dead bird, the dead squirrel, the dead rabbit, or the live fox that they stumbled upon!

The vicious thorns of a long established Dog Rose became a landmark to avoid while traipsing through the trees. Mama Beech herself, fully laden with Beech Nuts, became a shelter and a climbing frame and the supporter of two swings. The three Birches (small, middle sized and large) were a good boundary. The ever tricky brambles started to fruit and the sun allowed a few a taste.

Now we all need to rest. Then it will be time to build on what they have all learned these last few weeks. Covid has stripped so much away from all of us, but in this instance it has given every child in school a chance to enjoy Forest School this Summer Term, and everyone of them has smiled, chatted, grown in confidence outside, tried something new and challenged themselves to go further.

Year 6 are lamenting that there will be no Forest School in KS3.

Wherever they go it is unlikely to be part of their curriculum.

Which is such a shame as it is such an untapped resource in secondary education. 

It is a struggle financially for many Primary schools to offer quality Forest School access for pupils, and that was before the covid bills started to pile up. Education has been starved of funding for way too long and outdoor learning swings from 'dispensable' when the budgets won't stretch to 'desirable' when Ofsted hints that they see it as a sign of a well rounded curriculum.

You cannot win! Until the Government funds all it's ideals there will forever be a gap.

However this Year's School Leavers have engaged and gained from just 7 weeks of interaction with the great outdoors.

 I hope it is enough to maintain a life long love of outdoor learning.