Get into the Swing

My Year 6 Forest School group had seen me preparing a rope trail for the Key Stage One group earlier in the week. They were keen to have a go at creating their own rope trail obstacle course. They decided to split into two teams and design an obstacle course to challenge each other.

The first team chose a spot at the top of the grass banking. They decided that they wanted a tripwire at the start of their course. They looked for ways of securing the rope in place. They began by tying one end to the fence and hammering a post into the ground to hold the other end. They decided they needed more sticks to secure their ropes, so collected a bundle of bamboo canes from the store.

Boys + long sticks = jousting!

After being encouraged to weigh the benefits versus the risks of using bamboo canes as jousting sticks they came up with the following.

Whacking the sticks together hard makes them splinter

Thrusting the ends of sticks at each other could cause injury

Holding both ends of the sticks and striking the centre of  each other's stick slo-mo styley would be a safer option.

Meanwhile the second team were investigating how they could create a trap using a rope lashed over the beams of the gazebo.

Their plan was to create a loop that when stepped on would ensnare their unlucky explorer.

The other team came over to check on progress. The boys discussed the plan for the snare .Between them they realised that having a rope that pulls on someone's leg could stop the blood from being able to circulate, could cause the person to fall and hit their head, or that the force of the rope pulling in the opposite direction to the leg could injure the leg. They chose to abandon the idea for a snare. One of the boys recalled that when we found a tyre in the woods last week, I mentioned that we had a tyre in the store. He asked if they could use it to make a tyre swing.

Initially, the boys worked together to try an construct a swing using the ropes and tyre in the gazebo. After trying out several ways of securing the tyre to the rope, one of the children suggested that they would have more success using the den building posts. There were some skipping ropes already attached to the den building post that children had been using at lunchtime. The boys found that that could thread the thick rope attached to the tyre through the loops of the skipping ropes and twist the ropes against each other to hold them in place.

One of the boys had decided to see if he could use the rope they had lashed over the gazebo beams to create a swing. After a quick scout around the grounds, he found a log to use as a seat. He discovered that rather than trying to knot the thick rope, he could thread the log between plait of the rope.

The swing worked pretty well, but it was jolting as it slid along the beam. We tried tying a scarf around the beam to stop the rope moving along and although this helped a bit, the swing was still moving along the beam. After a bit of trial and error, we discovered that if we threaded the rope diagonally across the beams, the rope would stay in place.

The boys tested out each others swings and judged their merits. Many fits of giggles and whoops of excitement ensued!


The children have asked if their swings could be brought out at playtime for their classmates to use.  We may have to make a few tweaks to our designs (to prevent accidental upside down swinging to occur!) before letting the masses loose on them. Though I am sure they would prove to be a playground hit.

Obstacle course, what obstacle course?