What we have been getting up to at Forest School!

We really enjoy our Forest School sessions on a Monday afternoon. I am very impressed with the attitude of all children but especially the KS2 children. During our forest school sessions they support the KS1 children, offering help and teaching them skills and techniques. It is great to see them becoming so responsible and sharing their knowledge and skills with our younger children. This is having a great impact on the independence of our younger children who can ask an older child for support rather than a teacher.
 
This week some of us have been learning the clover hitch knot and trying to use a square lashing to make picture frame out of sticks and willow. It was really tricky but we persevered and showed brilliant team work skills. We also had great fun using natural objects to write 'Forest School' which we will use for a display in school.
In Early Years we spend every Wednesday morning at forest school!
This week we have been learning about Bonfire Night. We have talked about how to stay safe and then we had a go at making our own sparklers! The children selected suitable sticks and then had a basic introduction to 'lashing' by using pipe cleaners to wrap tightly around the stick. This was brilliant for our fine motor development along with Maths, Expressive Art and Design, Understanding the World and Health and Self Care.
In forest school this week we identified leaves and looked at how different they are now to when we looked at them in September.  We also made book marks with the leaves we collected.