Session 2 - Preparing the Fire Pit

On Thursday we are heading to Northumberland for the year six residential. We will be visiting Alnwick Castle and Gardens, staying in Wooler Hostel and then moving on to Seahouses to spend a day rockpooling and paddling in the sea.

We are hoping to have a campfire with curry and marshmallows on Thursday evening. My Forest School group are keen to be in charge of the fire so we decided that we would dedicate today's session to fire safety and building, maintaining and extinguishing a fire.

We began the session with Kim's (memory) game as a warm up activity. The children were sent off to find things such as bark, dry twigs and fluffy seed heads; which would be used later in the fire lighting activity.

The fire pit had become overgrown and untidy over the summer, so the children helped to re-dig the pit and clear the area of debris.

After listening to suggestions from children for fire safety rules, we referred to our campfire procedure booklet to see how many rules the children had identified and establish any more they needed to be aware of.

We set up our safety area (burns kit, first aid kit, fire blanket, water bucket) and sorted our fuel into piles starting with small twigs working up to larger logs. Due to a lack of resources on site, most of our wood has to be brought in. We were able to collect a small amount of dry wood which had been caught up in the elder and hawthorn hedging. we discussed why the green living wood would not make good fuel for the fire. Murad said that the green wood had too much water in to burn well.The children worked in pairs trying out the fire steels. They mastered the use of a fire steel very quickly and moved on to using the fire steel to light a piece of cotton wool. Reece and Murad quickly worked out that the cotton wool lit more easily when the fibres were pulled apart and fluffed up and if the fire steel was placed close to the cotton wool.

As the boys had made good progress lighting the cotton wool, we decided it was time to attempt to build and light a small fire. We observed which way the wind was blowing and the group correctly predicted which way the smoke would travel when the fire was lit.

Working as a team, the boys ensured they were working safely by following the campfire procedures. They were quick to point out if any of the team were breaking the rules (such as walking behind someone tending the fire or not using the respect position when tending the fire).
They successfully managed to light and maintain the fire before demonstrating that they knew how to safely extinguish it. Imath said that it was important to make sure that the wood was completely out before leaving it in case it start to burn again after we had left.