Mama Beech

I know I'm not the only person who feels that this last school year has been at least 18 months long! I think the chaos of the pandemic means somewhere in my subconscious it started in the run up to the March 2020 Lockdown and therefore is part of the same time period. For Teachers this was at least punctuated with a either a class of new faces last September, or a move to a different year group, or both. For Forest School it's just the same manic routine squeezing ALL classes into a timetable of four days!  In 2019 I took on a job to develop Forest School further at Chartham, I had a timetable that included 6 small group session of less than an hour and 4 afternoons of Forest School. The remainder of the time was for site and resource development, and we were chugging along nicely making improvements and extensions to what was in place. When Covid hit it suddenly went to nothing for a few weeks, then started up again with 16 classes, 4 classes a day, doing 90 minute sessions.

You cannot please all of the children all of the time. Or at least that is how it seems. Someone will always want to be vocal when it's too wet to climb trees, or when the mud slick is out of bounds, or when we can't go to the pond - or because we are AT the pond!  This week we went to the Wildlife Garden, a hedged in, gated area, where we have a good size pond. The children love pond dipping, I cart along a lot of the usual activities, and they get to explore a different small section of woods.  This was greeted by most as a happy surprise. Eager children wanted to get straight into pond dipping, and many spent the entire session kneeling by the water. The trees here are young and vying for sunlight. They are tall and skinny and offer a lot of shade, which frankly for the first half of the week was a blessing. It does mean that none are suitable for climbing, a fact that drew groans from a few.  I explained we were here for the pond, we had climbable trees last week, and we

Not the kind with diamond rings - the kind that often feels like bells and whistles may be needed for the children's engagement in whatever you're doing! In Forest School, we know that not all children will be engaged in every activity, which is why we have so many available, but it can be difficult to hook in THAT child who seems to not want to join in with anything. Now before we start please know I don't have any magic formula. The small number of children who are disengaged from almost EVERYTHING that we do have an assortment of reasons for being so.  The majority of our activities are staples, available every week. Things like: Bug Hunting Tree/plant/flower/fungi/lichen ID Bird info and binoculars Basic woodwork tools (peelers, palm drills, string) Digging tools Mud Kitchen litter pickers Nature table Books  Dens The 'Nature Table' alters with the season and is something they create with their own treasures. Tree climbing is a given unless we've had really