WildTime

Spending time outdoors is fun. We all appreciate a little bit of sunshine, a warm breeze, hearing birdsong or a refreshing summer rain. But learning a little about nature also helps to connect us to our surroundings and to feel a part of our wider world.

Research is also revealing to us the health benefits of being out in nature through things like a simple walk, forest bathing or quiet moments of mindfulness.

Whatever your motivation for spending time outdoors there are plenty of places to find encouragement and ideas.

Here is the first organisation and links to their materials to help you along your way.

The Wild Network website has many ideas including a weekly set of challenges which can be done either in or outdoors. I particularly like their animal clothes challenge. What animal can you make your clothes into? Here's an idea:-

Click here to see some more.

They also have walking bingo cards, a different one each week and a free film which introduces how the wild network was started.

The challenge I've taken is to build an obstacle course for a wild animal.

Over time quite a few creatures have visited our garden, i'll share them in future posts, but a the moment we have a couple of squirrels that come each morning.

Now these squirrels aren't very bright. To stop them taking the bird food I put up a nut feeder just for them with a lid. 

What did they do? They ate it! Don't believe me? Here's the evidence or what's left of it.

So without any high hopes I decided to build a squirrel run. The plan was for them to run along the top of the fence, along a rope to the first tray of nuts. Then along the rope and onto the arch to a basket with more nuts suspended from the arch.

Needless to say it didn't work out like this so the run was adapted and here is a short video to show you how it all went.

An adaptation of the run is under construction. The magpie ate all the nuts in the tray and then the squirrel discovered running up the stick. 

If you feel inspired it would be great to hear how you got on. Have fun😃

Mud Pies

Here's a new challenge for the week.

When Year 3 take part in their Scrumdiddlyumptious topic Forest School has a massive Mud Pie Bake Off.

A bake off always makes me think of chocolate cake, my favourite!
This poem must be the one most often requested over the years.

This year we saw some amazing creations which you can see in the pictures below.

Remember Gnorman and now his friends are always hiding in Forest School. Look out for a troll, a fairy and a doorway to the Fairy World. (Click on the picture to make it large)

So can you design and make the most spectacular showstopper of a mud pie ever? No time limits now, be creative. If you are very lucky and have a sand pit in your garden why not make one out of sand. whatever you choose all you need is a bucket, flower pots or just your hands for moulding, things you can find in the garden (don't go and pick all the flowers that have just started to grow - you might make someone annoyed!) and of course a good dose of imagination.
Have fun😀

Making Chairs with Year 6

The challenge is to make a chair that you can sit on. You will need to use your knotting skills, design skills and creativity. Of course you can only use materials that you find on the site. So what will you come up with?

This activity was aimed at using and applying skills gained over a series of Forest School lessons.

The lesson had quite a tight time constraint on it and given that the children worked remarkably well.

Some children wanted to stabilize their chairs by pushing their chair legs into the ground. All the recent rain made this a fairly easy task. But making the structure stable was still quite a challenge and while some opted for the easier solution of using logs when all else failed many persisted to achieve a stable structure.

One clever design used the Tepee design made when in Year 4 and added three seats to it.

Here are some of their designs:-