Author: jennyf74

🍂🍁🍂SUCH lovely sessions this week! Loved making Elder candles with years 5 & 6 for some Remembrance Day craft – a great introduction to knife work control, sitting, holding and using our tools safely. LOVED the twilight magic in the after school session this week – THAT moment of silence when the torch light was shone into the Spinney and you could see that it changed how EVERYTHING looked. Breathtaking. 🌙 ✨ 🍂🍁🍂

🍂🍁🍂FOR early years we started this week with some leaf-tastic fun exploring our site, exploring leaves – the colours and shapes – story time with our book ‘It was a Cold Dark Night’ building a leaf house for Ned the hedgehog 🦔 throwing the leaves in the air, making leaf masks and JUST being in the outside. 😊💚🍂🍁🍁

🍂🍁💚BEST job in school!💚 🍁

🍁 🍂🍁A lovely first week back to school – a few pictures from the school site: mandala making with years 5 and 6 with year 5 using the ‘Go Find It’ cards and finding literally whatever we could (lots of great ‘thinking outside the box’). FUN had making BIG movements dragging along the LARGEST sticks and branches we could find, helping each other to keep safe. SOME brilliant collaborative den building, laughs had playing bat 🦇 and moth and coming together around the fire for some fat ball coconut oil lamp making 🌙 💫🍂🍁🍂

🍁🍂🍁MY after school club will be pretty much in the TWILIGHT zone (we are calling ourselves the ‘Twilight Team’ 😊) this term and I am SO excited about the dusky opportunities this will bring, altering my session flow so we use the best light for our tool work before the sun sets and THEN making the most of it with opportunities planned which could include blind rope trails, star gazing, bat 🦇 watching (before they hibernate), playing with light and enjoying fire and food. IT will be game heavy to keep us warm with new suggestions made each week guided by our coming together and session plans led by each group.🍁🍂🍁😊💚

🍂🍁🍂MY photos are from the following morning before the school opens. We also made the oil lamps at home after half term🍁🍂🍁

💚🌳🍃🍁🍃WISHING everyone a happy half term. ANOTHER busy week leading a Stone Age session for our Year 3 children: each one making a dragons spark with flint and steel and making their own ‘cave’ drawings on cloth before playing Hunter and Deer hide n seek. WE have had leaf waxing and leaf clay printing and THE after school club enjoyed making rope swings and slack lines, developing their own bartering system before coming together for the last time in our block round the fire for popcorn 🍿 and hot chocolate 😊 and our younger children have had lots of fun in our outdoor classroom area with lots of mud, dancing, role playing, cafes, animal hospitals and much more 😊🌳🌲🍃🍁

🍁🍃🍁LOOKING forward to the break and planning LOTS more activity possibilities.
Take some time out for yourselves 😊🍁🍃🍁

🍁🍃🍁🍃FINALLY, save the date: 21st December for a Winter Solstice Celebration. This will be a free giving back session at the Outdoor Classroom BUT numbers will be limited. Details and booking information to follow in the next few weeks 💫 💫💚🍁🍃🌳

🌳🌲🌳GRABBING the chance today to have a bit of a play in readiness for my last year 6 after school club this week – they have requested some knife work – so I thought we could practise our knife skills to make little flicks. Very therapeutic. Year 3 have a Stone Age session so for our outdoor learning I have prepared some bramble cordage to show the process before we have a flint and steel fire and make some charcoal drawings. Looking forward to it all BUT also can’t wait for half term! Have a great week everyone 😊💚🌳🌲🌳🌲🍃

🌳🌲🌳SUCH a busy week – hurrah for Friday! Hope everyone is ok 😊💚. THIS week at school my after school group had a sticks and string session. We had lots of fun trying our hand at simple lashings which were introduced with our den building and then Among Us Task List: making some picture frames, giant spider webs 🕷, some berry printing – picking only what we needed and being mindful of what was picked – enjoying autumnal sunshine and light, making bows and arrows and sling shots and coming together for a warming fire and hot chocolate. Good for the SOUL 😊💚💚❤️

🌳🌲🌳ANOTHER amazing afternoon with awesome children. At the end of last weeks after school session I asked what they wanted to do and the response was to play ‘Amongst Us’. I’d never heard of it 🤦🏻 BUT with a bit of research realised that this computer game was about team work and challenges – all I had to do was pop this into a Forest School environment. It wasn’t perfect, I hadn’t read the bit about ‘skips’ and was unclear about the whole voting thing – BUT it was great fun. Brilliant for team work, introducing new skills via the tasks and having a community connection all engaged in the same game. Loved it! AND to think that my gut instinct was that you can’t bring a computer game into the woods. 🌲🌳🌲😊

🌳🌲🌳WOOHOO! Blowing my own trumpet BUT I found this tough for many reasons but I’ve now completed The Therapeutic Forests Certificate in Adult Mental Health which means – once I have my certificate and licence – I can run Woodcraft for Wellbeing sessions using their materials🌳🌲🌳

🌳🌲🌳THIS does NOT make me a clinical psychologist BUT it does give me strategies and suggestions which I can put into my practice to create safe and welcoming spaces for all and activities to promote well being 🌲🌳🌲🌳

🌳🌲🌳ONE of the tough elements of the course was thinking about your own mental health and attitudes and then being made even more aware of what some may be going through/ gone through. Always be kind. You never know how deep some of us have to dig to get through the day ❤️🌲🌳🌲

🌲🌳🌲Having some reflection at the end of another busy week, loving the Forest school sessions running at school; one group is on session 3 and we have enjoyed making dens, using tools, whittling, making bows and arrows, bug hunting 🐜 🐛 🕷 and trying out the fire steels. We are on session 2 with another group and it’s been great seeing how everyone plays and coming together to shape the next session. So far we have played tracking games, made dens, used tools, played in hammocks and led each other around a blind rope course. Now all I have to do is work out how to incorporate a computer game …. 🤔🤔😊😊🌳🌲🌳

🌳🌲CAN’T wait to start ‘planning’ sessions for school to get back out in our gorgeous Spinney again. We are so lucky to have these wonderful grounds and there’s a brilliant pond area too 🐸 🐸 🌳🌲