This week the Burrow children have been focusing on the timber trail. We have been testing our balancing, climbing and confident skills as we took on the challenges that the trail can give us.
Once we finished snack we discussed what things we should and shouldn’t do on the trail. “Should we push our friends?” “If we’re stuck should we cry or ask for help?”. The children answered the questions with what they felt was the right decision. On Forest School it’s all about the children choice and helping to guide them on the right path.
After this it was time for the children to get going. Straight away they started to climb the trail and finding lots of different ways to start. Some children who are smaller in size found the start a little tricky whereas our taller children did this with ease. We saw great confidence in the children, one little boy wanted to jump from a log that was very high. I mentioned that maybe I should help just this once but before I knew it they jumped and landed on their feet with bent knees. How amazing!
Throughout the week the children found different ways to play and explore whether they wanted to spend time on the trail or maybe climb in our tyre pit. Alongside this plan I also created a ‘role play’ fire pit. This allowed the children to use their imaginations when creating fire, we had great language such as “look at the orange flames” “it’s very hot”. Without even prompting the children they were knelt on their knees and telling me not to touch the fire. If anyone saw us they would think were just staring at a few sticks on the floor but we were actually sitting around our fire! Of course there’s no point in having a fire without marshmallows so we made ‘pretend’ mallows out of clay. We did have to remind the children not to eat the clay just in case we had someone who liked to eat it!
A lovely week spent on forest school and as all the staff in the Burrow will agree, we have so much fun that it’s the quickest hour of our lives!
Thanks for reading,
Lauren