Mama Beech

Since I started leading Forest School at Chartham sessions have changed, altered, evolved, and changed again! Like everything in education, there are a lot of influences that require addressing, working with, working around, and encompassing.  What began as two or three afternoons a week with half a class became rapid 80-minute sessions with 16 bubble classes across 4 days when covid first hit! A School that had traditionally reserved Forest School for KS2 PPA sessions, and split the class between on-site sessions and swimming off-site, suddenly had full classes, all year groups and all Key Stages engaging weekly. The move back into some semblance of normal is ongoing, but we tried hard to stick to providing FS for all classes until late last year. The compromise was shorter sessions, which did impact the quality of activities but allowed the whole school to take part for well-being. In November we moved to longer sessions, with classes alternating each term/half term with their y...

Everything has its pros and its cons. Every job has good tasks and annoying tasks. Every week has productive days and slow days. Forest School sessions have their ups and downs. This week has been the perfect example of that! It has been gloriously sunny, that equinox weather that comes twice a year, cold mornings, sometimes even frosty, followed by a clear blue day and rising temperatures that mean you end up carrying half your clothing home in a bag! Layers are the secret to all Forest School dressing! After a bright and cheerful weekend, I arrived at basecamp on Monday to find we'd had visitors. To use the legal term we'd had trespassers. This happens way too often. Mostly it's very minor disruption. I have to remove their empty alcohol bottles, their food wrappers, stand up all the log stools, put basecamp back into a circle, and check over the site. Obviously, all the time muttering to myself because it eats into my set-up time and makes me nervous about what I might h...

Like everything in education, budget dictates. There are lots of projects, schemes, plans, ideas, and pedagogies that schools can adopt to focus on. Many will indeed improve school performance, or children's learning, or make day to day life a little easier for staff. None of them come with a guarantee. All of them require training or membership, a one-off payment or a subscription. When a school considers implementing Forest School it isn't any different. It is true that it is an investment rather than a charge . Whatever is decided upon is introduced to improve an aspect of school. A maths scheme of work to ensure everything is covered. A literacy programme to make it easier for all staff to use the same tools. Buying in PE trainers to improve the activities provided, to outsource the planning, and to cover PPA times for some or all staff. Whatever the cost, the aim is to enhance what the school provides. Forest School is a pedagogy, but sessions are a 'service', boug...

This week has been a bit manic. We are co-arranging the Level 3 Forest School Training which is happening next term at our site, and the admin around it arrives in fits and starts and takes up more time than expected when the emails ping in!  Meanwhile, usual sessions are going ahead across the school and need provision and development.  Across the week I have engaged the groups to help alter the Mud Kitchen a little. It is simply a makeshift structure of pallets, but they like using it - a LOT! So we discussed what they wanted to add, worked out how to add it, and then the children helped create the changes. This has ranged from planting a small hedge to hammering nails and using the bow saw to cut wood.  Children from Year 1 to Year 6 have had an input in the design, which will remain quite fluid to ensure it can easily be changed at a later date. The children decided they wanted a table, a sofa, and a way of 'serving' food to people not in the Mud Kitchen. So far, the ...

The children have long since ceased to view rain as a problem. Rain means water trapped in tarps to create mud. It lands on the floor creating mud. It fills holes in the ground forming muddy puddles. Rain, drizzle, sporadic showers, constant splodges, huge bouncing drops, and continual deluge, all equal: MUD, and that's fine by them! The Dig Pit is an uneven surface, potholed from daily digging with meandering trenches running through it, and perfect for collecting pools of rainwater. The largest ditch of all was originally two separate holes joined (by year 5)  in an attempt to collect even more rain into one place. When it rains now, we have more of a pond than a puddle. I half expect ducks to move in when we're having a particularly wet week. When I took this job I was told that many children don't look forward to Forest School, that they hate being wet and cold, and even the children who hadn't done FS yet were anticipating it to be miserable because of the stories ...