Snow Tracking

With so much snow still on the ground, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to look for evidence of animals that inhabit or pass through our school grounds. We began by looking at some examples of animal prints. We considered which of the animal tracks we would be likely to see in our school grounds. The boys agreed that foxes would be a good possibility because we already had evidence of their presence in the school grounds. The garden team have reported problems with foxes digging up newly planted shrubs. Also, we have found the remains of birds attacked by foxes. Farhan said that we would definitely see cat tracks as we often see cats walking through the school grounds and have issues with them pooing in the vegetable beds. Imath said that we might find bird tracks. We talked about what bird tracks we might see. Suggestions included robins, seagulls, magpies and those little brown birds! We discussed we different animals might visit our school grounds. Reece suggested that they may come in search of shelter and Murad said that they come looking for food. We decided to begin our search for tracks in places where their was shelter or food sources. Farhan decided to check the fruit bushes and hedgerow. Here we found cat prints. He said he could tell the prints belonged to a cat because of the size and shape of them.
Unfortunately, we couldn't find any tracks of other animals this time. We thought about where we would need to go to find the tracks of other animals on our spotting list. Reece said that to find otters we would need to look near a river as they live near water. Imath said he had seen a deer on the hills when he was travelling on a motorway.


As animal tracking opportunities were rather limited we couldn't fail to be drawn by the boundless potential of masses of snow.

A spot of snowball target practice was in order. Together, the boys discussed what rules we would have for our snowball throwing contest. We began by locating a place where passersby would not be struck by a wayward snow ball. The den building posts seemed to fit the bill and as there were five of them and five of us it seemed obvious to choose on each to aim at. Murad suggested that 2 minutes would be a good time limit for throwing. While Imath proposed that the number of hits should be decided by the number of marks left on the posts at the end of the throwing time. Round one began with great fervor and I soon realised that I was a terrible shot! At the end of the first round there was a clear winner. Reece however spotted a problem. Some of the posts were set further back than others meaning some of the group had to throw further. We agreed that to make it fair, we would swap which posts we were to aim at for round two (my aim did not improve). The contest continued with a range of modifications after each round, including introducing snowlkeepers (whose job it was to try and intercept the snowballs before they could reach the posts).


With all this snow about and a nice steep slope to tempt us, there way only one way we could finish our Forest School session today.
Pingu does it, seals do it and Imath assures me sabre tooth tigers do it - who can resist sliding down a slope on your belly. Not us that's for sure.

Our first sledge game involved the boys working in pairs to slide down the bank traverse the playground and negotiate getting the sledge back up the slope with one passenger still aboard. They ruminated on the pros and cons of having a heavier or lighter passenger. Heavier passengers travelled down the slope more quickly, but were harder to push back up the slope. The distance back up the steepest part of the slope was shorter but trickier to tackle than the longer route up the gentler slope.

Next the boys decided on an every man for himself contest.

We experimented with different ways of sliding down the slope in order to find the best way to travel further. Reece managed to slide further than the rest of us, so we studied his method. He set off with the most pointed part of his sledge facing downward. He also span his sledge near the bottom of the slope to increase momentum.

Finally the boys decided to challenge themselves to slide down the slope standing up (I decided to opt out of this one!) They all succeeded in in negotiating the slop standing up without falling over. Though some took longer than others to keep their balance. 
Just time for a nice warming up of hot chocolate and a chat. Farhan noticed that our cups had left imprints in the snow. He said the pattern reminded him of the animal footprints on our tracking sheets. We compared the pattern to our tracking sheet and decided it looked most like the footprint of a fox.