Focus

I've often said I don't have a 'Focus Activity' planned for a session. No art or craft with an end product for the children to work on or take home, but that doesn't mean there isn't some kind of specific activity going on!

Since Half Term we've been looking at leaves a lot. Some because the children's classes are named after trees and they show an interest in identifying their 'own'. For weeks there has been the opportunity to look, to ID, to draw and, to create with leaves and many children have taken that opportunity, either alone or with friends. This may be one of many activities they do in a session, or it could be something they chose to focus on for a very long time, and it has caught the interest of all the year groups across the Primary School.

These have been Child-led activities that may have involved an adult at the child's request. Occasionally it may have been a suggestion by an adult that sparks an idea, or a comment from an adult that leads to an extension of the activity. This is carefully chosen input from the adults, with the intention of sparking curiosity or action, but it is not adult-led as if the comment is ignored, the activity will not happen!

This week a TA who came outside to support a Year 2 class, took a look at some of the James Brunt art we have with the leaves and posed the question to a few children around her - 'Do you think we could do this?', and a mission began.

For over an hour a core of 6 children, with many others coming and going, worked on recreating a piece of Art in Situ collage with leaves on the floor beneath Mama Beech. In self-arranged working parties, they sought out fallen leaves of different colours, cleared the woodland floor to have a clear space to work, designed the pattern, listened to each other and advice, and worked together to make the art. 

This sounds very calm and creative, but they're 6-year-olds! It was hectic and noisy, full of fun and laughter and excitement, lots of rushing about as well as considered placing of every leaf!

Again it highlights the importance of great support outdoors, staff able to facilitate and strengthen the learning in front of them rather than take over and direct it away from the child's original purpose.

Not only did we have a large colourful work of art on the floor by lunchtime, but in the afternoon a Year 1 class decided to add to it. 

The child-led learning of one class became the inspiration for another set of children to set themselves a challenge and then in turn to try something different.

Maybe these children would've decided to create art and writing on the forest floor without the example of the class that had gone before, but by leaving it there we opened up the 'child-led' option to cross-year groups and classes as well as direct learning within their own session.

With this in mind, I've gone back to an old idea from when I first started Forest School that kind of fell by the wayside. An old fashioned photo book of all the activities the children have done so far this year.

On a very rare occasion a child will say they have 'nothing to do', and I will list all their options, hopefully the album will be a visual memory jog of what they've done before and what others have done. I take lots of photos for the website, for twitter and for the Forest School Facebook page, but the children don't always see them. If you take a photo on a phone or tablet children are always desperate to see it immediately, mainly because if they don't theres a good chance they won't ever see it! The days of albums, shoeboxes full of old snaps, and huddling together to look over memories together is on the decline. So here's a way to bring it back meaningfuly for the children in Forest School. 

It is a book full of potential activities to focus on. Children love revisiting the tasks they love as well as trying something new, and because of sessions being on different days and at different times, with different age groups and in different weathers, they do not have uniforn experiences across the week, so taking an idea from someone elses session is never a bad idea either.

We'll see what it inspires!

Meanwhile, having put the leaf art on twitter, the lovely James Brunt replied to the class, telling them how good their effort was. That caused great excitement and made them even more proud of their achievement - a screen shot that will go into their Nature Journal, and into the album, and hopefully help make the activity one that others would like try.