St Charles, 08.02.21 & 10.02.21

There are lots of claims made for FS and one of them is about it improving resilience . It’s a difficult thing to observe but it was on show in this week’s sessions, mainly because of the weather.  The icy cold brought challenges which were both mental and physical.  Some children found the cold very difficult but they kept walking and moving and eventually distracted themselves enough to last the session.  Others just weren’t at that stage and had to go in to get warmer. 

Y3 and Y4, after having had shorter, separate sessions recently were together again.  The children leapt into playing today as they were delighted with the light snow covering the area.  Tree climbing was on the menu after having been off for what seems like an age because of rain and slippy conditions.  Y4’s curriculum theme is Vikings and so I had cobbled together a Viking long ship out of cardboard, so that we could do the ship burning ceremony from the Up Helly Aa festival which celebrates the Viking rule of Shetland over 1000 years ago.  I left the ship blank so that the children could paint and decorate it prior to burning.   We had an interesting conversation prior to choosing activities when someone suggested that the girls do the painting and the boys should do the playing.  I asked why and reply was that girls are more artistic than boys and boys are better at playing.  Having established that we were in fact an equal opportunities outfit, the girls did indeed do the painting!  Lots of other girls played too.  Once the ship had been painted and stuffed with newspaper to aid burning, the Up Helly Aa song played from the speaker.  The children seemed to instinctively react to the rousing music and some of them marched round the circle or stood there like brave warriors, arms crossed on their chest and heads held high as the flames licked our little ship.  After that display of bravery, most of them just wanted to go in because it was too cold!  We did go in and get warmed up and finished with a reflection on how today had gone.  We had quite a lot to sort out today and we concentrated on the first rule of forest school which is to ‘ look after yourself’.  We talked about how to look after ourselves in the cold weather; and how to look after ourselves when things don’t work out with someone else. 

The Infant bubble is always full of energy and today was no exception.  The sun came out and warmed things up slightly, and we set off with a Magic Trail.   Having successfully found the fairies’ magic treasure, the fairies thanked us by leaving the Magic Wishing Egg of Elsinor upon which the children could lay their hands and make a wish. Many of them screwed their eyes up tight and concentrated very hard to make their lovely wishes on the shiny, blue egg.  I was at pains to point out that wishes don’t always come true but its nice trying and hoping.   There was swinging on rope, climbing on trees, balancing on beams, creating a new caveman world and a castle, and making bird feeders. 

En route to the top field for a spot of animal footprint trailing, the Y5/6 children took a detour and threw themselves into some mad snow play on the playground  - making snow angels, writing in the snow and making roads.  We found some bird trails, followed them and were surprised at how far the birds had walked.   We played a couple of games in the glorious sunshine and then went down to the forest school area.  This group had to both set up and clear up which they did very well and were keen to help.  One lad has set the gold standard for washing up today – it will be hard to beat such a performance.  There was a lot happening in this session as the children quickly split into groups to do what interested them: chopping the kindling for the ghillie kettle; using the paracord to move logs; learning how to wind and store string and paracord;  and debris shelter building.  After some initial ‘see-saw’ type play with a couple of planks of decking, some of the children tried to lash them together to fashion a sledge.  They discovered however that it wasn’t plain sailing because the decking was too long; the rope interfered with the base of the sledge; and there wasn’t enough slope or snow to carry it very far.  None of that mattered however because they had such good fun working together to try to achieve a common goal.