Forest School

The final sessions of Forest School have either been wet or very hot and sunny. Now that the tree canopy is finally open, it has provided us with some very welcome shelter and shade.
At Pound Pill, Year 3s had the chance to whittle a keyring, using vegetable peelers. A little tricky, but the children showed great resilience and perseverance and their designs were amazing. The Year 4s made Dream Catchers. It was such a relaxed and sociable crafting session, the children sitting under the Outdoor Classroom enjoying the cool shade. They were binding twigs together with coloured lengths of wool, helping each other, then using their own creativity to decorate with coloured feathers, wooden discs and beads. The Year 1s used sweep nets and white cloths to go on a summer bug hunt. Some children chose to dig for underground invertebrates in the woodland, others did a sweep of the long grass area and found crickets, grasshoppers, tree crickets, and we saw many tiny moths, which we didn’t try to catch. It was harder to find creatures under the ground, we noticed that different insects were seen now than those we found in February.
At Broadwood, Years 3-4 had a free-flow activity session, with a focus on our wild birds. The children chose between making a pine cone bird feeder to take home, making fat ball bird feeders which were hung in the woodland, using the bird hide to research more about our wild birds from the books provided or spotting birds with binoculars or colouring bird pictures and the final station was to paint woodland scenes or birds with watercolour paints on canvas boards.
All our Year 5s also had a free-flow activity session, also with a focus on our wild birds. The Year 5s, however, were very lucky to have bird nesting boxes to assemble and paint. The Wiltshire Scrapstore have given us 20 bird nesting boxes, 17 of which required the children to assemble, following a diagram and instructions. The wood used was from recycled pallets and was pre-cut. Using a hammer, nails, and tacks, the bird boxes were
carefully assembled and then painted with acrylic paints which The Wiltshire Scrapstore had also provided. These boxes will provide cosy nesting for Blue-Tits, Robins and Sparrows.
Year 2s at Pound Pill and the Year 1-2s at Broadwood took their class enquiry out into the woodland for some hands-on learning. ‘How do plants grow around us?’ Each child had a bean seed which they placed in a clear plastic cup with moist tissue. The idea was so that the children could see visibly how a seed germinates, the development of the root system, then the stem and the opening of the first 2 leaves. For this enquiry, one of the books studied was called ‘The Tin Forest’, one of my favourites. At the start of the story, an elderly man looks out upon a grey, wet, desolate dump of tangled metal and other unwanted items. At the end of the story, a Toucan drops a seed and flowers and trees begin to grow, colour and life returns. Being artists, the children used charcoal and white chalk to represent the start of the story and then used oil pastels to illustrate the ending of the story. Some wonderful artwork was sketched and created under the green trees in our woodland, outside providing inspiration.
Thank you to all our wonderful parents and carers who have supported our children during their Forest School sessions and given up their time. I wish you all a happy outside exploring summer.
Thank you.

Annette Griffin
Forest School Practitioner