Year 6 in the woods, Spring term 1

18 February 2022

Wind may have postponed our time in the woods this week, but it didn’t stop us and we eventually endured the wild weather to complete our final two Forest school sessions.

These last sessions we have reflected on our time at Forest School over the children’s school career and thought about the children’s legacy, as part of our ‘Why Should We Respect Our Planet?’ Big Idea.  We have talked about rights and responsibilities and about looking after and preserving the rights of others. When they were younger, the children had lots of opportunities to gain confidence and skill in climbing as we had two ladders in the Forest that had been kindly made and gifted to us by Grandparents.  The ladders have inevitably come to ruin after years of use, so Year 6 have rebuilt them, using skills they have learnt in Forest school, they have made a ‘Legacy Ladder’.  They measured and sawed greenwood, and practised and used square lashings to fix the rungs on.  They leave it behind for the future generations of children to use at school.

There was lots of mud this week, which the children were encouraged to offer to clean up themselves at home, and celebratory S’mores (Yorkshire S’mores- no lids!) to mark the end of the sessions and in memory of Marcus the Mudman (2020- 2021).  It’s been a brilliant few weeks of Forest school, well done Year 6 and thank you for the songs…

February 2022

Over the last month, the Year 6 children have consolidated skills learnt over the course of their Forest school career in school.  With more emphasis on the children self directing, working as a team and managing their own risk they have been set tasks which they need to solve more independently, drawing on communication skills and teamwork.

Over the last fortnight the children were tasked during the session with setting up a shelter to light a fire beneath safely and cooking marshmallows on it.  After teaching the children the new Italian hitch that would help them raise their shelter form the ground, I observed and supported where necessary whilst they;

  • Talked through and assigned jobs
  • Collected firewood and sorted, found a hearthboard
  • Used the adjustable guyline hitch and italian hitches to set up a shelter with a ridge line
  • Lit the fire with flint and steel
  • Tended the fire with collected kindling
  • Lopped and whittled willow sticks to toast marshmallows on
  • Set up safe seating for the group
  • Toasted marshmallows (and sang and nattered)
  • Safely put out the fire ensuring we left no trace
  • Took down camp and left the wood as it had been
  • Were resilient, resourceful, reflective, respectful and kind

Pretty awesome skills for a group of 10 and 11 year olds. Well done team…

January 2022

Year 6 have got stuck straight into hard work in Forest school, drawing on the skills they developed last year and beginning to develop more independence now that they are becoming competent.  The last two days we have revised our knife skills, whittling handles for mark making tools that we are going to use in art, later in the term.   Each week a couple of individuals will have the job of lighting or tending the campfire to cook our snacks.

As part of our big idea, Why Should We Respect our Planet? we are also taking part in a couple of citizen science projects, where our observations will become part of research that has a wide impact.  One of these will be the RSPB Big Garden Bird Study next week  and we are also going to use our Wildlife camera to give information to the PTES mammals study.  The children might want to do this in their own right in their outdoor spaces, sign up and join in here…  https://ptes.org/get-involved/surveys/garden/living-with-mammals

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Painting used in image above ‘Winter Woods’ by Richard Thorn

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