Forest School Adventure, the Wildlife part!

Today dawned with scattered cloud and a breeze. The woods are always cooler and it's a relief to imagine 'working' without a borderline heatwave distracting everyone! 

Everywhere on St. Mary's is in walking distance, but we were collected and chauffeured to site.

For anyone unfamiliar with the islands off of Cornwall, the Scilly Isles have a Mediterranean temperate, are 5 habited islands, and scattered between are many more! The biggest is St. Mary's, where we are, and no where is as much as 3 miles from the sea, so it is the backdrop to almost everything.

The site we will be using is next to  the beach so the setting is very photogenic! Here, there are various introduced trees, mostly mature, that are similar to Chartham. On school grounds we have Scots Pines, here there are huge Canadian Pines. There are invasive species to look out for as well as ones native but rare in the UK. 

Bracken, gorse, and brambles are a given! After a chat with the Isle Of Scilly Wildlife Trust we had the all clear to start Forest School tomorrow! 

Having spent the morning organising the next couple of weeks we got to explore again. I couldn't resist doing a Health and Safety test on the long swing because OBVIOUSLY we need to be sure it's secure!

However, tomorrow, the reason we are all here dawns bright and early, and these excited people can't wait!



Location: United Kingdom

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Indoor Forest School

Image
On rare occasions, we need to cover a Forest School session INSIDE. It may be because the weather prevents a session, it may be a staffing issue, it may be an introduction for children who will find the outdoors challenging, but whatever causes it, there are times when setting up activities in a classroom is suddenly needed. I've said before that I have a large IKEA blue bag that I keep certain activities in, these are not necessarily ones I can/will use in Forest School, like jigsaw puzzles, colouring, cutting out, etc. It's fairly quick to add some of the nature table items, bug ID, and bird guides, etc. into the bag to make what is basically 'nature learning' feel a little like Indoor Forest School! One week in December started with me under the duvet with a fever and headache, and a PCR test pending. School canceled Forest School because waiting each day to decide what the following day's timetable would be was too hectic. So once back in on the Wednesday indoor...
Read more

Forest School and GCSEs

Image
Earlier in the year, I wondered aloud - well, in print - why Forest School isn't automatically offered as an add-on to teacher training. I know of a few universities that organise visits to sessions, and even one or two that buy in extra training and regularly send the students to a session to participate, not just observe, but it isn't standard practice. Whether Covid is on the rise, mutating again, or slowly dying out, in this post-lockdown world getting children outside as much as possible is the healthiest option! Outdoor learning has proven time and again that it promotes well-being and increases positive mental health , as well as promoting physical health . With the new GCSE in Natural History on the horizon Secondary Schools may well find embracing Forest School an easy way to introduce the subject. Of course, Forest School is not yet embedded in all Primary Schools, those that have it may well find their pupils at an advantage when choosing such a GCSE a few years aft...
Read more

Term 1 2024

Image
Our Forest School life has been busy - ridiculously BUSY! Keeping the weekly Blog going became impossible, so now we are at the end of Term 1, we're going to recap everything that's happened since the summer holidsys ended, and how we continue to juggle school, community, and training, whist being as child focused and child led as possible!  After a Summer 'resting' our grounds had grown 4m brambles, 2 metre stinging nettles, and tunnels in the bushes grew and merged closed! When September dawned we had a huge amount of site maintenance to do before we could even consider any site development! Once 60% of it was complete it was safe enough to hold sessions there and Chartham Pupils started their trek outdoors. This year we're trialling a different timetable for providing them session. In Term 1, years 1, 3, & 5 have had Forest School. We are a two-form entry school so both classes in the year group are out at the same time, but on different sites with different ...
Read more