Mama Beech

It's THAT time of year. We have 4 weeks of Term 2 left and school is getting busier than ever. Carrier bags of tinsel and costumes are appearing, the Hall has been timetabled for rehearsals, and the children are already chattering about Christmas gifts. It's THAT time of year. Coughs, colds, and fevers are doing the rounds. Children are sneezing everywhere, staff have constant headaches, and the boxes of tissues in the classrooms deplete in a day. It's THAT time of year. Gluesticks and glitter. Christmas meals marked on calendars. School disco preparations. Shopping to do after work. Evenings out. Juggling dates. Watching time gather speed... It's THAT time of year.  Hectic. At basecamp it's different. The rain beats rhythms on the canopy, smoke curls in patterns, the birds twitter away above, we sit as we always sit making sure everyone is mindful of being safe, of keeping others safe, and of exploring exactly what and where they wish.  We have the opportunities to...

Thursday means the 'older' children, 8+, which always alters the pace. The smaller children are definitely doers but they flit around trying out everything and love exploring the space. The ferns form walls and every path is unknown. From their perspective the clearings are huge, the bushes dense, the trees tower, and Forest School is vast!  The older children are not as focused on the area as an entity in itself. They appreciate what it supplies; spaces for dens, trees to support hammocks, ropes to swing from, places to hide... They are mostly interested in what activities they can do. Some of these are the same as the younger group investigated. Role play, story telling, swinging, climbing, balancing, crafts, and tool work.  There were subtle changes in challenge and the potential product. Additionally, they also got to try fire starting, and making pop corn. These children had a little more freedom in the woods, they knew the boundaries and were able to explore it a little ...

The word 'holiday' instantly conjures up a mental image of a hotel with pool, sun, sea, and an obligatory palm tree in shot.  When you work in education the word needs defining. Christmas Holiday - that time where you exhaust yourself getting to the end of term with parties and treats and extra activities on top of a normal schedule, then dash around manically trying to organise friends and family for seasonal catch ups. Hopefully before you succumb to the virus you've managed to avoid at school for weeks. Half Term Holidays are when you book your doctor, dental, optician, hairdresser, etc. appointments, and arrange for plumbers, builders, electricians etc. topically sort out those household niggles. In between you sort out planning for the next half term ans catch up on anything you left rill the break. Once housework and shopping is thrown in, you might manage a day out somewhere... Easter is pretty much the same, but as it's a fortnight you might get to squeeze in an...

Education is full of contradictions. We want free thinkers but the curriculum is prescribed. We want independent learners but everything has a planned outcome. We want each child to be curious and engaged but every child has the same activity. We want children to take risks but we remove almost all of them. We want curious, independent, able, children who can self-regulate, behave responsibly, and think for themselves, yet nothing in the curriculum teaches them how to do this! It's written as a one-size-fits-all document and teachers try to weave their magic by opening it up as much as they can, making it as inclusive as possible, within the small time frame the termly schedule allows.  Forest School, on the other hand, is based on 6 fundamental principles: Long Term Event Set in Nature Holistic Approach Learner centred Risk Benefits Qualified staff These foundations in every practice will look different. For us, it looks like all Primary School Classes outside for a minimum of 90 ...

Looking back over Forest School from September 2019 surprisingly few sessions have been in a downpour. That's not to say that plenty were not wet - they certainly were! - but either it was lighter rain, or wet from overnight rain, or somehow scattered showers missed our session time, or, as we all know, it waited till 3pm to start! Inuit languages/dialects have 40 - 50 words for 'snow'. It saves having to describe it with a sentence. For instance, snow that has fallen and is on the ground is aput, while piqsirpoq is snow that is drifting across the land rather than qimuqsuq which is an actual snowdrift.  In Kent this week we've used many words for rain! It pounded, and poured, hammered and pelted, drenched and flooded much of the county. A lot of it has been overnight, but days have not been unscathed! Forest School this week was at its driest times - damp! This was accompanied by high winds for part of the week, with gusts verging on safety levels for us, and impedin...

So, after a rather warm night's sleep in the centre of town (ear plugs are a brilliant invention!), a deliberately tepid shower, and a hearty breakfast, today its the ferry! I'm used to either a very small 'foot ferry' akin to the one that goes from Lymington to Yarmouth, on the Isle of Wight, or the huge vessels you drive on to. Today is something in between. It's a passenger ferry, no vehicles, just people, and it's a glorious day for it! The sun is out, it's not as hot as yesterday, and the breeze is cooling without churning the sea into a wild ride! It's not a boating lake either! This is the Atlantic, where the Channel flows in at the South and the Irish Sea seeps down from the North. Think of pirates and shipwrecks and Cornish legends!   Penzance port has a great view of St. Michael's Mount, and the town. The sky and sea are blue and calm. It takes a while to drift past the Cirnish Coast, but eventually Lands End is rising from the sea and we t...