This term's forest school has seen Year 5 experiencing a range of skills and activities over just 3 weeks each! Willow Class went first,. followed by Holly Class.
We started our sessions with a fantastic land art project, inspired by the works of Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Shilling. We used the nature around us to develop a piece of art with purpose. What was its meaning? Why was each part created? How did it all link together? The finished art works were an absolute delight of colour, contrast and design.
The second week saw children using tools to split wood. We used hatchets, knives and mallets to break sticks down into matchstick sized pieces for use on a fire. The rest of the class were tasked with building a shelter to protect from the rain (roof), wind (walls) but also have some home comforts such as a seating area, campfire and decoration. The teamwork was exemplary and the safety learnt when using tools will be something they will keep for life!
The activities in our final week together were based on behaviour in the previous two sessions. The better the behaviour, the better the reward, with the ultimate offering being that of s'mores, toasted by themselves, over a campfire! I am so pleased to say that every single child got this reward as they were all fantastically behaved and demonstrated brilliant forest school skills throughout :-
Friendship
Observation
Resilience
Exploration
Safety
Teamwork
We started by making different formations of campfire and learnt how each is useful depending on the situation. We then used fire strikers to create sparks, that could be used to start a fire. Because of our safety demonstration, we then were allowed to make small fires using cotton wool. We learnt all of the safety around fire lighting including when and where it is safe to do so and that we must only light fires under the supervision of adults.
To end the final session, we all toasted our own marshmallows, squashed them between 2 chocolate biscuits and enjoyed squishy, yummy, melted s'mores!
A fantastic 3 weeks for each class and some memories to take into Year 6 with them!