A few of you may be aware that I wasn’t in last week, unfortunately I wasn’t led on a sunbed all week I was in fact doing something a lot more exciting! I spent the week at All Hallows Prep School starting my Level 3 Forest School training.
On Monday I arrived at the school in the pouring rain and thought to myself how unlucky we were to pick such a wet week to start. As I met the 10 other people, Charlotte (co-owner of Free Rangers) started us off doing a few getting to know you activities. After this finished we headed up to the woods which is a short walk away. Char started off with us making friendship bracelets from a friendship tree and building a fairy village as the old one was knocked down by a nasty wizard! In the afternoon we learnt how to do a tension knot and a timber hitch, we also worked with a bow saw and put up our own shelter.
As Tuesday soon came round we learnt how to use a bill hook to make a mallet, this was using dead wood so some of the group really struggled due to the dryness. However after we spent our time doing this Char told us that using green wood be a lot easier… thanks for that! We fell a tree in the afternoon which gave us the green wood; the tree wasn’t playing game though and decided to fall awkwardly! After this it was time to use a sheath knife to mould our handle just the way we wanted it to be.
Wednesday wasn’t as fun as we had to learn all about woodland management and had to stay in all afternoon! In the morning however we did learn how to light a fire, luckily I have had lots of experience in this so didn’t struggle too much. After I was done I thought it would be nice to go and help others, some people had never lit a fire before!
On Thursday we had a little time to ourselves to make a few objects, I managed to make a sword, a whistle and a tent peg! This is all part of my portfolio which I have to build up until March next year!
As the week drew to an end it was time to reflect on our week on Forest School training; thinking about what we had learn and our experience during the week. I enjoyed every bit of the training, getting to know others who were as keen as me about forest school and being able to learn new things to bring back to the Burrow children. Next week I’ve planned to use a bow saw to make name tags for the children; hopefully they may be able to teach you how to use a bow saw safely!
Thanks for reading,
Lauren