Year 6 (Sharks)

 Welcome to your Forest School activities page!

Here you will find details and photos of all our sessions in the Woodland and on the Animal Park. 

Please scroll down the page to see what we have been getting up to each week!

Shark Class will be having 6 weeks of Forest School sessions, starting on Tuesday 4th November.  The class will be divided into two groups, Group 1 will have their Forest School session on Tuesday afternoons, Group 2 will have their session on Friday afternoons.

The last Forest  School session for Year 6 will be on Friday 12th December.

During the next six weeks we will be visiting the Animal Learning Centre to rediscover what is involved in caring for our animals.  There have been a few changes since the last time these learners visited, and it'll be interesting to see what they all remember.

We will also be visiting the woodland, which is very familiar to most of the class, but we will be learning about the natural environment and watching how the seasons change during the next 6 weeks.

There will be lots of spontaneous learning opportunities, but we will also be doing some orienteering, making land art pictures, looking at our community garden, searching for fungus, and we will be making some shelters involving rope and knot work.

Please send your child with appropriate clothing for their session each week.

Please see the main Forest School page if you are unsure what they should wear.

Thank you,  I'm really looking forward to the next six weeks.

Miss T.

Session 3 - Tuesday 18th and Friday 21st November

Orienteering in the Woodland

On Tuesday the Animal Learning Centre was really muddy and Group 1 were able to dig out the stream that flows from the duck coop, but on Friday everything was frozen!  There was no fresh water because the hosepipes were all frozen and there was a thick layer of ice on the water trays.  It was lots of fun trying to lift the ice off intact, and took a real team effort!

Our three chicks are growing fast now, and they're getting thicker feathers to keep them warm as the winter draws in, but they absolutely love to have cuddles, and almost jump into our hands when we bend down to feed them and pick them up.  They were falling asleep on Tuesday when the girls snuggled them into their coats to keep them warm!   Horace and the goats were very fussy this week and everyone loved spending time with all our animals.

We headed into the woodland and up to the Community Bench, where Miss T gave us the woodland maps.  Most of us could remember how to ground our maps so that everything on the map matched it's position in the woodland.  We found 10 orange markers on the map, and Miss T gave us a list of pictures that were drawn on log cookies (eg Autumn tree, flower, sunshine etc) and she asked us to go and find the location of each marker and write down the number on our list of pictures when we found each one (eg sunshine was at number 10 etc).  It was a bit tricky to start with, but those who listened to the instructions soon went off hunting for picture log cookies.  Most of us found all 10 within about 30 minutes, but some of us needed to remember to keep our map grounded, otherwise nothing was where they thought it was!  VERY confusing.

It was lovely to see that some learners were happy to help others when they got stuck, or couldn't find the location of a marker.  It's important also to READ the map, not just guess!  All the log cookies were located as close to the markers on the map as possible.

A super learning session this week.  Well done everyone.

Have a look at our photos, you can even see the frost on the grass in the meadow on Friday's photos!

Session 2 - Tuesday 11th and Friday 14th November

Digging out the woodland ponds

The weather was a little on the damp side for both our FS sessions this week, and on Friday, it absolutely poured down all afternoon!

We only had a short visit to a very muddy and slippery Animal Learning Centre on Friday, but we did manage to sweep the mud from the paving slabs and move a big tray to put near the gate back to school for a welly wash.  We had a bit longer on the ALC on Tuesday, and we managed to get some jobs done.  I also needed to check the pockets of certain children, before we left, to make sure they hadn't snaffled our little chicks!!!  The chicks are SO tame, they were just happy to be cuddled!  All the animals were well fed on Tuesday too, but on Friday, only the ducks and a few soggy chickens ventured out of their coops / sheds.  Even Horace stayed in his paddock all day. 

We decided we might as well work with mud and water, seeing as we were already wet through from the rain, so we took some spades and a bucket down to the woodland ponds, and Group 1 dug out the middle pond and made a fantastic dam, so good that the middle pond completely filled up with water before we left! and Group 2 dug out the bottom pond, mended the dam from Tuesday group (which had leaked through due to the volume of water in the middle pond), and made another dam at the bottom of the third pond.

There was some absolutely wonderful collaborative team work during both sessions, amazing communication and excellent consideration for each other when using tools and when digging out the ponds.  We had an enormous amount of fun during both sessions, and there was some amazing face painting with mud.  Some children were quite happy to just sit in the pond!

We found an apple tree that was absolutely covered with apples, so we shook the tree (very gently!) and loads of apples fell to the ground.  We forgot the bucket on Tuesday, so we filled up each other's hoods with apples to take up to Dottie, Donut, Horace and TomTom.  We ate some of them too, and they tasted really good.

On Friday, we went down to the bridge to look at the river.  There was SO much water in there and it was flowing really fast!  It's a good job we hadn't decided to go on a river walk, it would have been far too dangerous!  We went to the bike ramps in the middle of the woodland and made a mud slide down the slope.  Nearly everyone threw themselves down this mud slide, and in retrospect, we probably should have done that first before going to the ponds; we could have washed everyone clean!

Group 1, you will get the chance to go on the bike ramp mud slide next week if it's still muddy enough,

Two absolutely fabulous FS sessions this week, Year 6.  You all had an wonderful attitude and a fantastic sense of fun.  A passer by said how wonderful it was to hear your laughter and see you all having so much fun getting wet and muddy!

Have a look at some photos below (through the raindrops on the lens!)

Group 1 - Session 1 - Tues 3rd November

A visit to the Animal Learning Centre

We took Group 1 to the Animal Learning Centre this week, where we met all our animals.  I was amazed at how much you could remember from previous visits, and everyone was happy to complete the jobs on the Job List.  Everywhere is very muddy now, but we still managed to get the water changed in Horace's drinking tub, and the goats drinking tubs; we put fresh hay in the goat sheds and we made sure everyone had lots of lovely food to eat.  Horace was very well behaved and he sat beautifully for his food.  We also made sure TomTom, our visiting pig had lots of fruit bits too!

Once all the main jobs were done, there was time for cuddles with our 8 week old chicks, and our guinea pigs, which were extremely popular with everyone.  Our chicks are really tame and love a cuddle.. we named one of them Sparkles, because she has little white flecks in the feathers on her neck.

It was lovely to be down at the Animal Learning Centre with you all again, and one of our group, who has just joined Stonebroom School, said how much she loved meeting all the animals!

Have a look at some photos below...

Group 2 - Session 1 - 10th November

A visit to a very sludgy Animal Learning Centre!

Oh it was pouring down all afternoon today!  But no one seemed to mind, and lots of muddy fun was had by all (most!)

We managed to get a few jobs done at the Animal Learning Centre, and Horace's drinking water trough had to be cleaned out twice as a few children decided to clean their wellies in it!  We put fresh hay in the goat's buckets and in their hay rack and we fed everyone some fruit bits out of the playground piggy buckets.  Most of the chickens were in their sheds, and only Shaggy goat came out for a fuss, but Horace and the ducks were very pleased to see us and didn't mind the rain and the mud at all!

We went and had a look inside the old building, and everyone was amazed at how much space there is in there!

We went in to the woodland and talked about how to use loppers properly and safely and then we headed down to the meadow to find some apples, some branches of the apple trees and some willow branches for the goats to eat.  There were a lot of apples on the ground and we looked at the differences between oak trees and apple trees.  We carefully loppered a few branches and gathered lots of apples to feed to the pigs.  We played mud sliding on the ramps in the woodland and then we made our way back up to feed the forage to the animals.

We were extremely wet and muddy when we got back to school, and some of us were quite cold too.  This is because a lot of you were not wearing the correct kit

PLEASE MAY I STRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CHILDREN BRINGING APPROPRIATE KIT FOR THEIR FOREST SCHOOL SESSIONS ?

WE HAD TO LEND OUT 6 COATS AND SIX PAIRS OF WELLIES TODAY .. A LOT OF CHILDREN DID NOT HAVE A COAT IN SCHOOL.

Forest School kit consists of:

Old joggers, waterproof over trousers (if possible please}

long sleeved t shirt, sweatshirt / hoodie

OLD, WATERPROOF COAT

Wellies and hat

EVEN IF THE SUN IS SHINING IN THE MORNING, IT MAY STILL BE RAINING BY THE AFTERNOON!

Please... layer up and keep warm and dry.  WE WILL BE OUT IN ALL WEATHER!

Our photos are a bit blurry this week as our cameras got really wet!  But I think you will get a good impression of how much fun we had, despite the weather!