Another Holiday Club has zipped by faster than your wild children down our zip-line. It was another fully booked week of absolute madness and fun. Here's what we got up to:
As always on our holiday club we offer the children a selection of activities to choose from. They choose what they want to do, immerse themselves and move onto something else, whether that's something we've organised, or something they want to achieve and we support them in that endeavour to the best of our abilities. Across the week there was a strong theme towards den building, especially at the latter end of the week. Tarps popped up across the paddock, as groups of children worked cohesively together to tie up a veritable shanty town!
Tool work was another strong focus too, and knives, axes and drills were used both constructively and destructively: children sawed, carved, drilled and crafted a variety of weapons, role-play items, jewellery, and other pieces to embellish their play, whilst others sawed, and chopped up wood for our fire as we instilled safe working practice around how and when the tools should be used. I'm happy to say that the children did brilliantly whilst using all of the tools, and all children returned home with all their fingers intact! Furthermore, children created with clay, making a plethora of clay-based art and items to take home and paint. Excellent stuff:
One of my favourite things about the clubs is how the children are brought together and how easily friendships are formed. I think we could learn a lot from the open-minded confidence of the children and how easily they work together to achieve and overcome problems. A major facilitator of this is that the majority of Forest School is child-led. Although we plan activities for the children to do, they make it their own as well as teach each other about how they tackled the activity. Excellent social skills, peer learning and communication development.
Alongside the above, the children also zipped down the zip-line, splashed in the river, dipped in the pond, ran and hid in the plentiful undergrowth, jumped and leaped off logs, and munched their way through a mountain of pizza individually created and cooked over a fire made by the children. Doesn't that sounds terrific? On Friday we also made the best of the weather to trek down to the Brook to net creatures from the depths, skim stones, splash in the water, sit and rest in the buttercups, and meet the horses. Perfection.
All in all, it was a wonderful week and we hope our Free Rangers holiday club members had a brilliant time. We're pretty sure they did. Those marshmallow induced smiles don't lie!
As always, thank you so much for supporting our Holiday clubs. The popularity of the clubs is testament to a lot of hard work behind the scenes so thank you for your kind words and regaling us with the positive stories your children have shared with you of their time with us. To see the complete set of photos please click on the link here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/124128095@N06/albums/72157669279144696
If you have any stories you would like to share, or you would like to leave a comment on how we've done, please do so below or on our Facebook page!
Thanks again,
Red Fox 🐾