Mama Beech

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...

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 ...

When I switched to two days on site and two days working from home I thought I might get bored.... Whereas over four days I would usually facilitate 14x75min Forest School Sessions, fitting planning and admin in around them, now I have 7 sessions on site and 2 days at home doing the paperwork etc. Adhering to the 'essential travel' only guidance I don't travel 50 miles to use the school computer, and as I have no classroom, just basecamp, I usually open up the laptop in the staff room while at school. Again, I now don't spend any time in the staff room unless it's to grab a cuppa! I don't need to loiter in the building at all. But as we all know, the danger of paperwork at home is that it's not a 9-5 log on! Last week I scanned in over 200 documents at home, old Nature Detective  sheets and other guides, information, and spotter pictures that I have collected over the years, many that I can no longer find online! Having scanned them, I spent the following da...

  Is it me or does this year not feel particularly new?!  So far 2021 is a hangover of 2020. Not much 'out with the old and in with the new' to celebrate! Where as January is usually filled with the determination (and struggle!) to make changes for the better, this year it's overwhelmed by a want and a need to get back to the norm. I know for a lot of Forest Schools Lockdown means shut down - and I am so sorry that small businesses offering such a amazing opportunities to children are having to take a step back. I'm also heartbroken at how many children will be missing out on those opportunities. There are pros and cons to running a Forest School within a Primary School. Working around other peoples timetables and, for some, working with other people's themes and plans can be difficult and frustrating. But many have at least managed to continue to provide sessions because they are based on a school site. In Lockdown March 2020 we kept minimal staff on site and the r...

This week Christmas has arrived at basecamp! The 400 trees are in the frosty ground, the top of the lopped holly bush is our festive decoration, Reception Classes had a story around the campfire, and next week's celebration for the end of term is almost ready to roll! Last week I pointed out the pitfalls of Forest School 'Lite' , short sessions of outside learning in that it foregoes some of the routine and reduces the activities available. It was, and still is, a great way to get classes outside, and children react well to it, but this week threw up the other difficulty - over use!  The soil is eroding around basecamp as foot fall has gone from 2 or 3 classes a week to 16, the mud can be fun, but also needs managing. This has a knock on effect for the school cleaners when classes traipse endless mud back into the building! This was not helped by me allowing Year 6 to mud slide along the ground! They did get very muddy and very wet and very cold. We have in the past, and on...