Marshmallows in the woods

The last few weeks have been particularly chilly at Forest School. The children learning about ways to keep warm including wearing lots of layers and doing activities that require us to keep moving. Today, we decided it would be good to take our fire kit to the woods to help us keep warm. 

Damien did a sterling job wheeling our kit all the way to the woods. We found a suitable spot where the ground was flat and free from trip hazards and set up our fire circle. We played the change places if you are... game to reinforce our rule about walking around the outside of the fire circle. Next talked about what we might need to light our fire. Near to our fire circle, we found some weeds with a few fluffy seed heads remaining. Along with a little cotton wool from our kit, we used these to catch the spark from our fire steel and ignite our fire. Maryam developed a good technique for creating a spark with fire steel and was able to share her skill with other children in the group. 
With us, we had some silver birch twigs  that had been collected earlier in the year and dried out at school. Silver birch makes excellent kindling as it has a lower water content than some other hard woods and is rich in oils. Once the fire was established, the children ventured off to find a stick on which to toast their marshmallows. They had to find a stick that was at least as long as their arm and as thick as their thumb (The staff helped the children to identify that the sticks chosen were from non-toxic trees). Once a suitable stick was found, the children used peelers to remove the bark from the sticks. 

As we toasted our marshmallows, we heard a sound overhead and looked up to see skein over geese flying noisy across the sky. We discussed where the geese may be flying to. The children decided that because it was so cold where we were, the geese may be flying off on a holiday to somewhere warmer.

After the toasting was finished the children took it in turns to pour water on the fire to extinguish it and shared with the group what they had learned. Once all the fire kit was safely packed away, some of the group were keen to finish the session with a game of 123 where are you. Meanwhile Maryam chose to study the ice crystals that had formed on the woodland shrubs.