Fire lighting has been such a big activity at the moment on forest school, with no signs of the children ever wanting to stop. Just this morning a little boy asked me “Lauren, lighting fires please?”. It has been amazing to see the on-going experience and confidence the children have gained around lighting fires, understanding all our forest school rules and knowing the boundaries.
We were situated in the cabin this week which luckily sheltered us away from the cold wind and rain which we seemed to have a lot of this week. After snack we spoke about our forest school rules and I introduced a new activity for the children to play during the session (linking in with not walking off without an adult). This is called “1,2,3 where are you?” and it’s an activity that Ed plays with the older children. I thought the Burrow children could be involved in this but thought maybe they were too young, however this week has proved me wrong!
When the children have time to free flow and explore the paddock, us as practitioners try and stand back to allow the children have use their ideas of play and imagination. Whilst they were playing I would shout “1,2,3 where are you?” and the children would shout back “HERE!” Some of the children in Burrow don’t have much speech or confidence so they would make a noise such as an animal or transport. As the week went on the children seemed to understand this more and more and hopefully after a few weeks we should have nailed it!
Before we ventured off around the paddock I demonstrated how we use our fire steels and light our cotton wool, however I allowed the children to give me lead on what to do, where I put my hands etc. Standing back and letting the children explore the fire steel a few children managed to get a spark from the steel! This is very impressive as we normally help the children due to the steel needing a little more force. Once our cotton wool was lit we spoke about touching the fire and how we have to wait until it has finished before we walk away.
The children then had access to the paddock where they chose to either play in the tree house, look for bugs or just around with their friends.
Next week we will be doing even more fire lighting but using wood shavings to the wool to explore a longer fire.
Thanks for reading,
Lauren