Fagley Primary Forest School: Leaf Matching and Lighting a Spark

It has been a busy week at Forest School this week. Inspired by bonfire night, the Year 3 and 4 groups have been thinking of all the different reasons why we have fires. Between them, they identified dozens of reasons from cooking and celebrations to making smoke signals and scaring away predators. The Year 3 group then experimented with using the fire steels to make a spark and light some tinder. Dylan was able to use his previous experience at Forest School to assist the other children in how to use the fire steel properly. Muskan was a little nervous to begin with, but was very proud of herself when she manage to create a spark and light her cotton wool tinder. Ion noticed how the cotton wool got smaller when it burned, whilst Silvie discovered that if you wet the cotton wool, it wouldn't burn.

Meanwhile, the Year 4 Forest School group accompanied the Year 1 class to the woods in search of a rainbow of Autumn leaves. The children had colour matching cards to which they were to find similar coloured leaves. The brown, green and yellow leaves were quite easy to locate, but the red ones proved to be more tricky. Luke noticed that the sycamore leaves had black tar spots on them (a great resource for a bit of Autumnal Forest School maths). Some of the green leaves Timea chose were covered in fine green hairs. She suggested that the hairs might help to keep the plant warm in the same way hairs trap warmth near to the skin in humans. The Year 1 children will be using the leaves they collected for an activity in class later in the week.

On Friday it was the turn of the Year 5/6 group to head to the woods. The children noticed that the path into the woodland was much muddier than last time we visited. They had great fun squelching through the muddy puddles (and nearly losing their boots along the way!) The session began with a few rounds of seconds away hide and seek. The children are becoming more accomplished at finding good hiding places more quickly. Next, inspired by the story of Kensuke's Kingdom, the children thought about how they could construct a shelter if they were stranded in the woods. They broke off into small groups and explored the base camp in search of suitable places to build a shelter. Each group chose to base their shelter around a tree. Sticks were gathered from the forest floor and various methods were used to try and secure the them in place with some children choosing tie them with ropes, whilst others wedged them between the branches of their chosen tree.