Current Year Group sessions Year 6 - March to April 21
Please scroll down the page to see photos of our latest sessions.....
YEAR 6 - You will be continuing your Forest School sessions for the first three weeks of the summer term in your groups, on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.
Have a very happy Easter break all of you, Miss T and Laura have really enjoyed working with you this term.
Please come to school in your Forest School kit on the day of your session.
Your Forest School kit should consist of:
Old joggers / leggings
Old t-shirt
Old sweatshirt / hoodie
Old coat
Wellies or boots (no trainers please) - in a bag please to change into after dinner
(you should wear your normal school shoes for the morning)
You WILL be getting muddy so PLEASE don't wear your best clothes.
For more info on kit and layers, please see main Forest School page.
Session 4 - 31st March
Orienteering and Easter Egg hunt in the woodland
The weather was absolutely beautiful today and Mr Walmsley joined us for a whole class session in the woods. We were given a map of the woodland and Miss T asked us to 'ground' our maps. We worked out where we were on the maps and talked about compass points and which direction was north, south, east and west. There were some numbered orange triangles marked on our maps and Miss T said there were corresponding markers hanging in the woodland which we needed to find by staying on the woodland paths and using our maps to locate them.
We split into groups of two or three, were given a number and we set off independently in our groups, to find our particular marker. These were quite well hidden and some of them were difficult to find. There was a log cookie in the marker with an instruction for a Forest School action, eg "jump like a frog", "zip up your coat", "balance on a log". We needed to think of a mime for this action to act out in front of the rest of the group back at the log circle.
Miss T also told us that somewhere near to our markers we would find a small package tied up with yellow string. When we all returned to the log circle with our packages, we found that they contained Easter Eggs for us to share. Each group acted out the action on their log cookie and the rest of the group tried to guess what it was.
We had a wonderful Easter Egg hunt session today and our behaviour was fantastic.
Have a look at our photos below.
Session 3 - 24th and 26th March
Learning how to care for our animals.
We spent both our Forest School sessions on our Animal Park this week, learning how to care for everyone who lives there. Some of the jobs are a bit messy and smelly, but it is essential to make sure all the animals are kept clean to keep them healthy; their water needs changing regularly and their sheds / coops need to be swept, cleaned out and poo-scooped every week.
We learned that the goats need to eat a lot of hay every day to help keep their digestion in good order and the guinea pigs have to have a lot of fresh veg along with their dried food to keep them healthy. Two of our hens have gone broody, which means they are sitting on their eggs and will hopefully hatch some chicks within the next few weeks. The hens will sit on the eggs for approximately 21 days, they only come off the nest for five minutes a couple of times a day to eat, drink and have a stretch. They fluff out all their feathers to keep the eggs warm. We had to be careful which eggs we collected this week, but mama hen let us know when we went too close to her nest! The ducks are laying really big blue eggs and Miss T has set up a hutch outside the gate of the Animal Park with hen, duck and quail eggs for sale. We helped to sort the eggs out and put them in the trays in the hutch. Miss T. says they sell really well and the money goes towards buying food for the animals each week.
The pigs are all on diets now because of the amount of food they have had during lockdown. They are only allowed fruit and veg scraps now, so at least they can still have our fruit waste from school!
We learnt a lot about our animals this week and some of us asked some really good questions about their care.
Have a look at some photos below.
Session 2 - 17th and 19th March
Improving our Forest School site and a visit to the pond.
After a quick hello to all our animals we went straight into the woodland this week. Group 1 emptied the litter bins around the Forest School site and took the heavy bags up to the gate at the top of the woodland; Group 2 collected some leaf litter from near the school gates and spread it around the tall rope swing in the woods. The ground around the swing has become very worn and some tree roots were showing. The leaf litter covered these exposed roots to protect them and to give a softer landing if anyone should fall off the swing. We found lots of creatures in the leaf litter and we made sure they were well buried when we scattered it around the swing.
After a short chat on the log circle both groups went down to the pond. On Wednesday it was a warm and sunny afternoon and we found 13 frogs and lots of frogspawn at the pond; the weather wasn't quite so warm and sunny on Friday but we could still see lots of frogspawn and at least one frog who was looking after it. We learned that it is really important not to disturb the frogs or the frogspawn or to take anything out of the pond so we lay on our tummies to carefully touch it without agitating the water too much. The frogspawn had only just been laid by the frogs so it will take a couple of weeks and some more warm sunshine before it hatches into tiny tadpoles. On Wednesday some of us managed to gently tickle the frogs under their chins!
We had some plastic bottles to pond dip with. These are much better than nets which churn up the mud and silt which in turn disturbs the creatures living there. Nets will also damage the delicate plant life in the pond, breaking stems and pulling up roots. We carefully dipped our bottles into the water and we managed to find lots of fresh water shrimp and some small leeches. We made sure we carefully poured the water from the bottles back into the pond. It was very exciting and we made sure we left everything in the pond just as we found it.
Have a look at some photos from this week's Forest School sessions.
Session 1 - 10th and 12th March
Introduction to our Animals and Planting Trees
We went down to the Animal Park to meet our animals. We fed the goats and met Scooby and Shaggy who came to live on the Animal Park in August 2020. We also met our four ducks and found lots of eggs in their shed. We fed the chickens and collected their eggs too, and we gave Horace and Olive, our pigs, a bit of food out of the school fruit waste piggy bucket. All our pigs are on diets because they have been so well fed by members of the public recently that they have put on a bit too much weight. Horace weighs a whopping 32 stone!
We went back up on to our school playground to plant some trees. We have had a Japanese cherry blossom tree donated to school, so Wednesday's group planted that and Miss T. had been given a pear and an apple tree so Friday's group planted those. We had to dig a really deep hole for each tree and Wednesday's group unearthed a hibernating bees nest while digging their hole! The bees were only small and they were very sleepy, so we very carefully put them back into the ground once we had planted our cherry tree. We were careful not to step on them and we watched them burrow back into the ground. We watered our trees lots and lots (away from where the bees were) and hopefully we will see some buds appearing on them soon.
We also had a look in the raised beds that were planted with carrots and leeks last summer. We pulled up some of the vegetables and found that the carrots had all wound themselves around each other! They were a bit too tough and woody to eat so we put them in a bucket for the pigs.
We really enjoyed our first Forest School session and we're looking forward to getting into the woods next week.
Have a look at some photos below.
