Mama Beech

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...

Many Forest School sessions run within Primary Schools. Trying to keep to the ethos of the pedagogy we know and love while influenced or even pressured, towards doing something very different is not always easy. For those of us who trained while working in education, a career of providing proof of learning is inbuilt. There's an entire philosophical PHD somewhere in the question of whether learning happens without proof! We reduce it down to tick charts, numbers, and letters, and load it as data onto reports and software. Often 'proof' becomes a product, something 'to take home', something tangible that stands solid as evidence of achievement. At Chartham, we don't use Forest School as an extension of what is happening inside. We may offer activities to support what's happening in their themes and topics, and the children themselves frequently bring their new knowledge outdoors and ask questions, act it out, and explore it in a different way. What happens in...