The Magic of Christmas

Imagine sitting out in Forest School on a cold winter day when in the distance the sound of sleigh bells is heard. The children in their excitement rush over to see who it is and all that is left in the ivy is a letter.

The letter is plucked from the ivy and enthusiastically the children, upon seeing that the letter is addressed to them, pull the letter open to find a message from Father Christmas.

The excitement grows as one of the children reads out the message which goes something like this:-

The children quickly make the task clear in their minds and split in to small groups and dash off to find a tree and collect materials to start building. Much negotiation, planning evaluating, designing and making takes place as the children come up with all sorts of ideas for their houses.

Floor plan completed

Leaves on the roof

A pathway leading to the house

 While the children are building there is the opportunity to speak to Father Christmas to tell him about all their ideas.

listen to ‘elf houses 3c’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Message for Father Christmas’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Hello Santa from3j’ on Audioboo

Late last night I was sure I saw a sleigh fly past and magic fairy dust covered the site.
Now we know next year little elves will be living among us.

Woodland Robots

The new Cornerstones topics take off again as a new half term starts . Year 4 have a fantastic day ahead with one of the real robots from Robot Wars coming in and a series of lessons based around this.

In Forest School we began by discovering some facts about robots using our True and False trees.

True or False: The first humanoid robot was built in 1939 and could speak 700 words.

Then it came to thinking about robots we would want to protect our woodlands, lots of ideas here. The children split themselves into groups and went off collecting materials to make their robots.

But just what do they do? Here are the children's explanations...

Here we go again!

I can't believe it's nearly half term and I haven't written anything up for the blog. Much now comes across on a daily basis via the school twitter and audioboo accounts.

The year got off to an exciting start with a return to Spy Camp for Year 6.

All ready in the sunshine for Spy Camp briefing.
A range of task to be completed and points to be gained.

Laser Lines: Here the children had to follow a route through a laser primed room ensuring that they did not touch or break the beam.

The Slackline tested children's bravery, balance and agility.

Tree climbing for those who would dare.

Can you see me? Creating camouflage to keep us hidden when out in the field.  

 Some sticks, string, and a flag but how do you make it stand up?
















Shelter building: will this keep you hidden and dry overnight?











Other skills included putting up a hammock and the water challenge. By the end of the two sessions all the points were tallied and the winning team was ....

So the children were all prepared for their reading of Stormbreaker and meeting Alex Rider.
Later on in the term the children returned to solve the mystery of the missing secret agent. More of that later.

Tears of the Gods

In Year 3 the children have been learning all about the Vikings through their Traders and Raiders Cornerstones project.

This gave the opportunity to do some storytelling in their Forest School lesson.

The story started in Asgard with Odin paying a visit to earth to keep a careful eye on Thor and Loki who were having a big disagreement. The children walk to the old Oak tree and see Odin's face clearly watching over all that is going on.

The story moves on to all the problems Loki and Thor are causing to their crops and the children are walking round the trampled path in our meadow where Thor and Loki chase each other in endless circles.

So the old man takes them to the woods and the people call out to their gods for help - the children stand in a circle under the cherry trees.

This terrible news causes the gods to cry and the old wise man takes them to the woods (trees in our mud pit) where the children find the tears of the gods hanging in the trees.

The old wise man instructs each of them to collect two different coloured tears and to return to their village.

Here they twist the tears into bracelets to wear so they will know protection from Loki's tricks.

As this was also the last session for each group they have also been sharing some of their memories from the year which you can listen to below.

listen to ‘3c #forestschool memories’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘the tears of the gods’ on Audioboo

Mud Day June 29th

June 29th is Mud Day. Ideas can be found here and here.



But before we even got started we lost one of ours in the mud!

Here is some of the fun we had on our Mud Day.....

But best of all was the water slide.....

Then of course you need to get cleaned up again ....

FSLI Embracing Outdoor Learning Conference 2012

I can't believe that just over a year ago I attended my first EOLC still to complete my Forest School leader training. A year has passed and for every two weeks of term 370 children have had the opportunity to experience learning in the outdoors. 

So it was off to Gloucestershire full of enthusiasm and eager to learn and unusually this year some early morning sunshine.

Welcome

The conference is all outdoors at the Redwood Education Centre near Slimbridge. A series of workshops were available three of which needed to be pre chosen.

• Danish Basket Making and Willow Sculptures

• Natural Musicians

• Cooking Outdoors with Children

• Learning through Flora and Fauna

• Forest School Skills Update

• Story Telling in the Outdoors

• Creating in Nature

The first workshop for me was Cooking Outdoors, having tried marshmallows and popcorn this year I was looking for something a little more exciting to introduce next year.

Orange Baked Muffins

These were great fun to make.


Each smaller group looked at cooking in different ways, on the fire, in the fire and on a griddle. The area was set out with a whole range of tools and equipment for cooking and the whole session was very informative. I certainly have some ideas for the future, especially as all the recipes are being emailed out to us.


Next up was willow weaving, the thing that gets me is that this looks easy but never is. We had a go at wands, fish and hurdle making. The information about types of willow was useful. As we've already started growing our own I'm hoping we will be able to self source this product in the near future.



Rain had punctuated the morning so it was good to see some sunshine over lunchtime.




















The afternoon was a great surprise to me. Music I must admit is not my strong point but the way Chris Holland delivered the session meant that even someone with my hopeless ability could envisage leading sessions encouraging children outdoors.

You can see some results here.

Looking forward to the next time.

Pharaoh's Throne

Year 4 have been learning all about Ancient Egypt as part of their Cornerstones curriculum topic.
During the engage week we organised an archeological dig linked to the history of the site. (You can read about this here)

After the dig each group came out for their usual seesions over the next two weeks and were involved in designing thrones for Pharaoh.

Over the past months I had been collecting pallets from deliveries to school, usually they were left out in the service yard for disposal, but after reading an article on http://creativestarlearning.blogspot.co.uk/ I decided to start keeping them. Poor quality ones are used for firewood and out of the others I have constructed a wood store and in this activity the children saw an opportunity to use them for thier project.

Earlier groups kept their thrones to quite a low level but with some experimenting we found that it was possible to keep things quite stable and from their on groups became a little more daring with their designs.

Here are some of the results:-

Acocks Green Primary Forest School

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the Forest School at Acocks Green Primary School. At first you as you cross the tarmac playground to the main building sandwiched between two main roads, you wonder where a Forest School site could be.

However, a short walk through a narrow gap open out to an outdoor classroom. Here there are tables, storage sheds and a wild boarder. The rain water is harvested from the shed roofs and for use in the mini raised gardens that each year group have.

Just past here are a couple of small wild areas and the nursery school site. This then opens out again onto a small playing field and beyond is the Forest School site.

It is amazing to think that just a couple of years ago this was an open space with some mature trees.

Now the site has a range of seating, a fire circle, a large wood shelter, wood store, mud pit, sand pit and an amazing treehouse.

Tina and Tina hosted the afternoon, sharing photos of how they had developed the site and how they ran the Forest School sessions. Children have the opportunity from Reception to Y6 to go to out for Forest School lessons. Groups are organised on a weekly basis for a series of at least 3 afternoons, and then after a rotation get another chance later in the year.

In addition to this it was interesting to see how they integrated the Y6 children into the younger children's sessions to provide additional support and learning opportunities.

Thank you to both Tina's for an interesting and informative afternoon.

 

Lost Gardens Project

We finally came up with six designs to create Lost Gardens of Helligan sculptures on our Forest School site.

Here they are:

 

 

Three tons of top soil arrived ready for the children to start moving and creating their large sized models of the creatures.

Lots of muddy hands later and the basic form is beginning to take place as you can see in the pictures below.

 

After creating the basic mud shapes the children will be choosing seeds and other materials to make the completed sculpture.

 

So what will they look like in the end? We'll just have to wait and see.