Mama Beech

Happy New Year All! A New Year is always a good time for change. Like a new School Year, or New Term, Birthdays, starting a new job, moving house, or any other time that feels like a perfect reason to make a change. In Forest School every day feels like a new start! Different weather, different seasons, different groups... nothing ever feels routine. It's what makes planning almost pointless and guarantees boredom is rare!  Every session I run has a 'plan', but no details. Activities I aim to have available, adaptable to weather and abilities, and open-ended to allow the children to follow their own learning, makes what I put on paper simply a guideline!  This year will be no different. I have a bank of ideas in my head and in the laptop that I can draw on to offer activities. There is no point in resolving OR intending any different! Personally, I've never made any resolutions, life gets in the way and makes them difficult if not impossible, but occasionally I use the ...

Often in a classroom you see 30 little models, all at least similar if not worryingly identical.  These are a great demonstration of how to follow instructions, but not creativity.  In Year 3 Forest School this week Sara Holman from Neurodiversity Me i nvited those who wanted to participate to create an animal. She had prompts that could (and in some cases were) be ignored, and a few tools, the rest was sourced from the floor! Twigs, Leaves, and Pine Cones created texture. Mud and Charcoal changed the colour of the clay.  Hand-Eye coordination, dexterity, manipulation, muscles: all fine motor control was exercised and imaginations fired! Some children followed a prompt, some didn't! Some made something, squashed it, and started again, and did this over and over. Some were inspired by Forest School and made birds, bugs, squirrels, foxes, and hedgehogs, others made their favourite turtle or dolphin... Some children took inspiration from what others made, the dolphin led to ...

How did we reach Term 4? That's half the school year gone. Winter break seems ages ago yet this still feels like the 'new' academic year! Summer will be here before we know it! However, there is a lot to get through before that happens! This week a school on the other side of Canterbury started a few taster sessions t o see how their children respond to the Forest School experience. We're beginning with half classes from Year 2 and hoping to end the Term with full classes. The aim is to see how well this works for them, and the potential is Forest School up and running on their own grounds. It's exciting to think that Forest School will be spreading a little further! The children have been amazing. They don't know me at all, they're not used to sessions, and they have to put up with a minibus to trip reach us. But they have embraced the rules, and the ethos and are eager for another visit. It's been a while since I had a basecamp full of newbies! When I ...

I'm sitting in a friend's dining room with huge mug of tea. She and her family are 'night owls' and I'm definitely an 'early bird'. It's 8am and she and I got to bed about 6 hours ago after a great dinner party and an overdue catch up in her new home. So now, the house is still, I have my cuppa, and I'm silently watching her snow covered garden. There are silent Crows and Magpies flitting up and down from grass to treetops, Sparrows performing aerobatic tumbles, and a Blackbird overturning leaves in pursuit of a sheltering bug, while Goldfinches zip past them at speed.  The snow is a messy mass of footprints, shadowy dips, and piled ridges. None of them human made. I can trace the journey the fox took from right to left along the edge of the patio and back again. I can see scurrying marks and holes the squirrels have left, and an assortment of pigeon footprints lead me to wonder if they were joining in with 'Strictly Come Dancing' last evenin...

Tomorrow is the Spring Equinox. Whatever the weather is throwing at the UK at the moment we are hurtling towards April and Winter has passed. There is so much to do and so little time in which to get anything done! Blowing gales and 'unauthorised visitors' leave a wake across school grounds, the outdoor environment needs maintaining to ensure that previous hard work and development isn't lost, and the evolvement of the site needs planning. Seasons change and bring new challenges to the outdoor area, these are set in nature and a learning resource to be harvested. It's something Forest School has no choice but to use, our 'classroom' is deciduous, we are open to the elements, we have to work with the rain or the snow and alter our activities to either accommodate or to celebrate the differences.  Finding an ants nest is a learning opportunity, the discovery of an eggshell beneath a tree is a learning opportunity, watching a pheasant strut out of the bushes is a l...