“Nature is not a place to visit, it is home” – Gary Snyder

“What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?’” – E.M. Forster

News from the garden

By A. Davison

Another three sessions of Forest School have been completed by our students, since the last Newsletter and what fun has been had. The structure of the sessions have changed slightly to allow for more freedom, creativity and choice whilst ensuring that the students have the time and room to enjoy the activities to the full extent.

Week five, the students have started to look at ecosystems and food chains by playing games that involved teamwork and communication and by exploring our garden pond. Pond dipping was a huge success with the students finding a range of different species, including newts and frog spawn. The students are very interested in the pond and will return weekly to check up on our resident friends. The creative side of the session focused on creating name signs for their pegs in the “Shack”. It is lovely to see how each student expresses themselves individually and what designs they came up with for their signs.

Week six, the students start working with the tools and practiced their whittling skills. They had the choice of whittling a spoon out of pieces of wood or practicing taking the bark off sticks. This practice is setting them up for future sessions and improving motor skills, focus and safety practices. Along with tool work, the students used air dry clay to make animals, flowers and bugs. The students loved this and were really creative in their designs.

What is happening next?

“Not all classrooms have four walls…”

Session seven, introduced a number of fun traditional forest school activities including more tool work. The students got to practice with the bowsaws this week which was hard but rewarding work. Along side this the students had the chance to practice building shelters using rope and tarps and got to refresh their knots from session one. For a holistic calming activity students also got to experiment with the air dry clay again as this was such a hit the previous week.

We now have four more sessions remaining, leading up to the May half term, which will focus on looking at  creating items that the students can take home and use as well as some fun teamwork skills. The hope is that the next four weeks will build the students social skills, along with communication skill, teamwork and leadership. The students have worked very hard over the last seven weeks and come on in leaps and bounds. 

The timetable for the remaining sessions is shown below, with the finale being the Forest School party on the 22^nd May, where students will get the chance to cook over a fire. We are looking forward to the final sessions for this half term.