Prep is Key
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 'table' has been a desk to work from home, an office, a study, and the table in the Diner Cafe.
The sofa has been a bed, a car, and a cinema.
We've added a 'Cafe' sign, and 'Worm Towers' - a 'luxury block of apartments' for the worms the children find while digging to be rehoused into. Every Mud Cafe should have one!
Their imagination, their creativity, and even their practicality knows no bounds!
Involving the children in site development, their ideas, requests, and labour, has made Forest School their own. As a site that doesn't pack up everything at the end of each session, yet is vulnerable to 'visitors', we are lucky that we can create larger structures to be semi-permanent. The great thing about equipment that's adaptable is that it never gets boring or routine! Things stay the same long enough for children to feel comfortable in the area, but can change to keep their interest from waning. Being part of the decision and design process helps make that change relevant, even if it is frequently steered in specific directions!
Site progression needs to be part of Forest School Time, whether it involves the children or not. If they help it can be part of the actual session, but when they don't it can't solely become a task for your own time.
It is too important not to set time aside for improvements as well as preparation and maintenance. It shouldn't be left as something that will get done MAYBE if time can be found out of working hours. Classroom based staff have PPA allocated, for planning, preparation, and assessment. Forest School Requires this too.
Forest School Leaders require time to plan around seasons, weather, skills, age groups and abilities.
Their observations need to feed into planning to assure activities and sessions are assessed accurately. The never-ending need for string/rope/yarn needs to be monitored/ordered/bought as well as the checking of tools big and small.
The ordering of biscuits and hot chocolate as well as any other foodstuff is required. Minor repairs on tools and equipment, cleaning tablecloths or spare wellies, forever collecting sticks and foliage, tracking down lost magnifiers in long grass, drying out books, cutting back brambles, coppicing, checking on the environmental impact of all we do....
These essential parts of running sessions need to be included as Forest School Time.
It can be a battle when attached to a School or Nursery but a commitment to any Outdoor Learning needs to come WITH the commitment to doing it properly.
The decision to provide Forest School should come with the decision to provide it to the best of the organisations ability.
It's harder when you are independent, and there is a danger that either the hours you charge for don't include enough time for this, or your prices for sessions are based only on the hours you have children present. If you don't factor in prep you will find your income covers two-thirds of your worktime or less.
Setting up a piece of woodland or playground or grass to be ready for children to explore and learn safely, packing it all away, monitoring it, caring for it, repairing it, and replacing it, is all part of Forest School. It usually ends up one persons responsibility too!
There would be no Forest School Sessions without everything else!
Counting things back in after use is preparation for next time. Fixing what is broken is prep. Cleaning and maintaining tools is prep. Planting and coppicing is prep.
It takes up as much time as sessions!
Don't underestimate it and don't let anyone undervalue it!
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