Stonebroom Primary And Nursery School

Current Year Group sessions

Year 2 (Meerkats)         april to july 2022

Year 2 (Meerkats)

 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're getting up to each week!

We are really looking forward to working with you this term Year 2!  Miss T and Laura have some exciting Forest School sessions planned for you.  We will be meeting our wonderful animals in the first week and will be exploring our woodland in the second week.

Have a look at all the other wonderful things we have planned for you by clicking on the Planning, Risk Assessments button if you're on your laptop or by tapping 'MENU', Forest Schools, Planning, if you're on your phone. 

There is a copy of the letter you will take home on Monday 25th on there too.

We are hoping that the weather is going to be warm and dry for us, but please make sure you wear sensible clothes for your Forest School session each week.  Have a look on the main FS page if you are unsure what you need to wear.

Week 3 - 10th and 12th May

Animal Park and Pond Dipping

Everyone asked if we could spend a bit of time on the Animal Park this week so we did some jobs, looked at the chicks, cuddled the hens, fed and fussed the goats and we also found out that we have three ducklings now.  The mummy duck is very protective of her babies, so Miss T bravely went into the nest area and 'borrowed' one of the ducklings for us to have a look at.  The ducklings will need to stay in the coop for a couple of weeks until they are strong enough to be outside. 

Some of us put some special oil on Horace's back.  His skin gets very dry and flaky at this time of year.  We wore special gloves to rub it in so we didn't get it all over us.  Horace really likes being oiled and his skin looks all shiny now!  Miss T has to oil Olive the pig because she gets a bit grumpy and makes a lot of noise, but she is a lot happier when her skin is all oiled and shiny!

We went down to the pond in the woodland and we talked about how to pond dip safely.  We use clear plastic bottles and we fill them with pond water and then lift them up to see if we have any creatures in there.  Then, when we've had a look we make sure that the water is poured carefully back into the pond.  We caught some fresh water shrimp, some really big tadpoles and some leeches.  The tadpoles haven't got any legs yet, but they were very big and there are a lot of them which is good! There were also some really small creatures in there that we could hardly see, but we weren't sure what these were.  Miss T and Laura said that if we do some more pond dipping in a few weeks there will probably be more to look at.  We really enjoyed this activity. 

We had a race back up to the log circle from the bike ramps and on Thursday, Group 2 showed some fantastic team work and communication skills when lifting a really heavy log over the balance beam pit near the bike ramps.  There was no way that the log could have been lifted by only a few of us because it was very heavy, but because we all worked together, we managed to put it safely over the pit so we could walk along it.  You'll see from the photos how well we did with this.

Have a look at some photos below.

Week 2 - 3rd and 5th April

Visiting the woodland

The children in both groups really wanted to spend time with our animals before going in to the woodland this week, so we made sure all the animals had some tasty treats out of the fruit waste piggy bucket.  There was some sweetcorn for the chickens and we saved a bit for the chicks, but we made sure they only had the middle out of the sweetcorn because they are too little to digest the skin just yet.  Some of the chicks came out of their coop to see us, but we were careful not to let them roam too far in case they got lost.  The mummy hen makes a clicking noise and when they hear that they all run back to her.

We went into the woodand and sat on the log circle.  We had a health and safety talk about how to be careful in the woodland and how we need to work together and look out for each other to keep safe.  Miss T showed us the Happy Bag and explained where the first aid kit is kept so that we know where it is if we need it.

We tried on some work gloves that we will need to wear if we are picking up litter or if we are using tools.  The gloves have a special grip on the palm and Miss T and Laura wanted to make sure we knew how to put the gloves on and how to take them off and roll them up in pairs.  We were very good at this and helped each other if we were unsure.

We tidied up the forest school area - there was a lot of litter, even though there are bins and we tidied up the mud kitchen because the pots and pans were on the floor!  We talked about the trees and how we need to look after them and then we went to have a look at the new Community Garden at the top of the woodland.  On Thursday we moved a big pile of chippings, in buckets and wheelbarrows, down to the swing in the woodland.  The floor under the swing has become very worn because of the amount of people who use the rope swing, so we put the chippings down under the swing to protect the ground.

Have a look at our photos below.

Week 1 - 26th and 28th April

Visiting our Animal Park

We spent the whole session on the Animal Park this week.  We were all very enthusiastic and excited and although some of us were a bit worried about meeting all the animals, by the end of the afternoon, we had made friends with Horace the pig, (and Olive, even though she's a bit grumpy...) Norris, Norbert, Ned, Scooby and Shaggy, our goats, our six guinea pigs and our ducks and chickens, and best of all our newly hatched chicks!  We had a long discussion about how some eggs turn into chicks and why some eggs don't, which was really interesting.  We talked about incubation and what that means and also what it means when a hen goes 'broody'.  We collected lots of eggs from the chicken coops and next week we'll have a look in the duck coop, where two of the ducks are also sitting on eggs and incubating them.  They should hatch in about two weeks.  We also changed the water in Horace's drinking tub so that it was lovely and fresh.  We learned some good skills there too, like how to fill up the watering cans so that they're not too heavy to carry.

Miss T and Laura were very impressed with both groups - some of the children asked some amazing questions, they listened to each other and asked further questions after listening to the answers. Everyone was very gentle with the chicks and we are lookiing forward to seeing if any more have hatched by next week!

Have a look at some photos below.