Fagley Primary Forest School: Sheltering from the frost

The weather has turned decidedly chilly over the past few days. On our way to the woods, the children noticed that some of the leaves were sparkling with a dusting of frost. Abbie remarked how the leaves crunched in her hand. Timea held her leaf to her cheek to feel how cold it was.

The children decided that they wanted to visit the same part of the woods as we went to last week to see if their shelter was still there. They led the way up the steep banking to their base camp. They were delighted to see that their shelter was still standing. We began by setting out our boundaries by tying coloured rags to the trees. The children decided they wanted to make the boundary line bigger this week so that they could explore further for suitable shelter building materials.

Sahdiya chose to create her own den in a tree she had found towards near the bottom of our new boundary zone. She used pieces of fabric and ropes to create a roof.

Meanwhile, the rest of the children continued work on last week's shelter. Timea draped a tarp over the wooden beams to create a roof. Connaugh and Luke collected dry leaves and ferns to spread over the beams. The group worked together to transport longer branches back to their base camp.

Last week, Luke and Connaugh found some beech nuts under a large beech tree. Today, Luke found an empty husk (the spiky case that surrounds the triangular nuts) with creature sheltering from the cold inside. On closer inspection we identified it as a cream spot ladybird. Unfortunately, the photograph we took was rather blurred. You can see some of the most common UK ladybirds here:

www.ladybird-survey.org

Timea and Abbie found more of the oak galls that we had found last week. Abbie opened one and found there to be a tiny gall wasp inside. You can read more about galls on the Wildlife Trust website here:
www.wildlifetrusts.org