Well what an amazing and exciting week we had had in the Burrow; and this is just how the adults felt! It has been great to allow the children to start their experience of using a bow saw and a hand drill!

I thought that as the children haven’t yet experienced any tool work it would be good to introduce them to the bow saw; it gives the children some independence but also the adult still has a lot of control.

We were very privileged to use the cabin for our location this week which gave us all the space we needed for using our bow saw. Once we had our snack and spoke about our forest school rules I introduced the children to our bow saw and hand drill, the reactions seemed pretty positive which gave me good hope. I also told the children about our ‘helping hand’ glove which is going to help us grip the wood; the children understood this straight away with no hesitations.

It was then time to have a go, I called each child up to the saw horse where we knelt down and got into the correct position. Putting on our ‘help a hand’ glove, we positioned ourselves by putting our non-dominant hand on the wood and placing our dominant on the saw handle. I would start the sawing off for the children as this is the tricky bit, once this was out the way I put less effort in and slowly let the children take over. Of course I was still holding on to the saw at all times but it gave the children a little independency to do it themselves.

After we cut our chunk of wood off I passed the children onto Soraya, Nic or Tiff to use the hand drill ready to make a hole. They would sit on the floor and either hold onto the drill or spin the drill themselves; we allowed the children to choose what they preferred. Once this was done we placed wool through and tied the end; then wrote their name on the front.

We passed the name tag over their head and each child looked over the moon and I could see the proudness they had for themselves. They had used their gross motor skills and fine motor skills during the whole activity. We also risk assessed and the children learnt how to think about their safety during the activity. All the children couldn’t wait to show their parents.

Lauren