First Introduction to Forest School for my group.

I am still busy beavering my way through my Forest School portfolio. I am currently in the process of draughting Fagley Primary's Forest School Policy and writing out the risk assessments for the tools and equipment.

I have been assigned my first four year 6 children who will take part in Forest School sessions. We met up on Monday to discuss the sorts of things they can look forward to doing. The children were very excited. We began by talking about what they enjoyed playing at home and places they liked to play. We talked about what they thought Forest School might be. Suggestions included "going to the woods, finding animals, planting things, making wooden things."
I showed the children a PowerPoint of some of the things I did on my Forest School training. The children were very excited at the prospect that they would be making dens and campfires and asked if we would be able to camp out! I suggested that maybe that is something we could aim towards for the summer holidays.

We discussed what sort of clothing we would need to wear for Forest Schools to keep warm and safe. The children were keen to try on their waterproof clothing.
Once we were kitted out, we had our pictures taken and played some warm up games aimed at establishing the boundaries for Forest School activities and the recall signals. It also gave me the opportunity to observe how the children interacted together.

We finished the session with reflection time around the log circle. The children said that they had really enjoyed what we had done so far and that they wanted to come to Forest School everyday!