Forest School Is Open

When I switched to two days on site and two days working from home I thought I might get bored....

Whereas over four days I would usually facilitate 14x75min Forest School Sessions, fitting planning and admin in around them, now I have 7 sessions on site and 2 days at home doing the paperwork etc. Adhering to the 'essential travel' only guidance I don't travel 50 miles to use the school computer, and as I have no classroom, just basecamp, I usually open up the laptop in the staff room while at school. Again, I now don't spend any time in the staff room unless it's to grab a cuppa! I don't need to loiter in the building at all.

But as we all know, the danger of paperwork at home is that it's not a 9-5 log on!

Last week I scanned in over 200 documents at home, old Nature Detective sheets and other guides, information, and spotter pictures that I have collected over the years, many that I can no longer find online! Having scanned them, I spent the following day laminating them so I can them use on site. I'm not a great fan of laminating, it adds MORE plastic into the environment, but these info sheets would need replacing daily if they were a paper version, so I hope it balances out against hundreds of photocopies per a year. 

It took a ridiculously long time for each task! It made my living room floor look like chaos, and produced a folder that weighs a kilo! 

It was time well spent as it's one of those jobs I rarely have time to tackle, but it was great to return to the wild at the start of this week!

Instead of two classes of each year group from Reception to Year 6, we have a single, reduced, mixed year group class/bubble in school. Half the classes, less than half the pupils, and therefore half the time required to deliver Forest School. Each day an activity goes up onto the school's Facebook Page for families to use while outdoors themselves if they choose to, and I know some teachers are encouraging outdoor learning via remote learning also. 

Once back on site of course nothing had changed. Forest School is a constant. The children are aware that there are fewer pupils in their class, that basecamp is a little quiet, but they know the usual activities are there AND something new also. 

This week climbing has been a big deal, maybe because some of the children who dominate the queue to climb appropriate trees are remote learning, allowing the more timid the chance to step forward. EYFS children who haven't had the opportunity to climb before started their foray into pulling themselves up, and sliding down, as well as thinking their way up and carefully picking their way down. 

Older Children have been equally engrossed in the climbing ropes. Last year the old apparatus frequently found in many a school hall was dismantled. Including the good-as-new ropes that would usually swing from a high bar. Three of these made their way outside and are hanging from to different trees. Mama Beech has two of them. Year 5 & 6 can just about get themselves onto these, other KS2 children need to bring logs or tyres to help them reach. Some of our KS1 children see this as a huge challenge! Not just the getting onto the rope, but the successful building of a platform to make reaching it possible. It's great to see them working in groups to achieve this goal.

The weather continues to be wet, so we have no lack of mud for the mud kitchen, or puddles for the digging area! Mud remains the children's number one favourite thing! This week they scooped it up in armfuls, they added it to puddles to get the correct quicksand consistency that would rob them of boots when standing ankle deep in it, and they splashed, and mixed mud soup, and smiled ear to ear.

Speaking of ears - we have a glut of Jelly Ear Fungus this year - which has been fascinating the children - and a few staff!

The vicious winds that battered the UK this week were further north than us in Kent, but as we are on a high plateau we were rather breezy. This brought down a few twigs, so moving on from the assorted twigs (Holly, Dogwood, Ivy, Willow and Hazel) that we had last week to peel and bind into animals or people, we had a good look at Elder. We cut small chunks of Elder twig, we devised tools for pushing out the soft centre of the cut wood (named Elder Cheese by Year 3!), and we threaded the Elder Beads we made onto red Dogwood Twigs - making crowns and hairbands, necklaces and wands. EYFS even made an abacus to take back to their class, as well as wand of 5 beads each.

Of course most of the children choose at least two activities while at Forest School. One will inevitably involve running and chasing - they frequently need to let out both energy and emotion. The other is often MUD, again perhaps the texture and manipulation required is in itself therapeutic. But eventually most come and sit for a while, do something less active, and inevitable chat with each other or an adult about life in general. This week our resident pheasant stopped quite a few tag games in their tracks as the children paused to have a good look. A couple of breathless boys, mud splattered and puce from running diverted back to basecamp to tell me excitedly they had seen it and it is "beautiful!"

So I shall update Facebook, the Forest School section of the school website, our twitter feed, and upload all those documents from last week onto the school's Sharepoint - and get them into age appropriate folders as well as theme folders for other staff to access. 

That just leaves making a more legible version of the map of the 400 trees we planted before Christmas!

That's enough for one week!

Next week I'll have to tackle 400 labels....

I'm still waiting to be bored!