Hello everyone,
As you may have seen recently, myself and Jess were successful in passing our Level 3 Forest School Leaders qualification. Phew!
Over the past year I have learnt so much from carrying out forest school such as what activities the children like, how these promote their learning and growth and how to further improve my forest school practice.
Forest school rules are a main part of a forest school session and they enable the children to engage and communicate with the adults to embed their understanding of what our rules are and how they keep us safe. When I started my training I had already done a few rules and ensured these were printed out.
If you didn’t know, our rules consist of:
- We must let the fire burn in the fire pit
- We look after our bugs
- We listen to our adults
- We remember what to put in our mouths
Sometimes as practitioners although a child repeats a rule do they really understand it? As practitioners we verbally reinforce these rules throughout the session. So if a child sees an interesting berry, we look at it with the child and often remind them that it’s wise to check with an adult to ask whether it is safe to touch first. We are also conscious to role model to the child through our actions, to further stress the importance of the rules.
Also our forest school song has been a huge hit within our sessions and I’ve had many parents asking about it or seeing what the words are. Now I don’t fancy doing a video of me singing as my voice is only meant for children and in the shower so instead I will write it down for you.
We are here on forest school, rain or shine it’s really cool
Having fun exploring, we know it’s never boring
We don’t pick and we don’t lick
And we must be careful with our sticks
We are here on forest school
We are here on forest school
Within our setting it has been great to explore a few more activities within forest school. Although I’ve always loved forest school and have picked lots of good ideas up from Ed Red Fox, my experience has been widened now that I have passed my course and I have been able to deliver fire lighting and tool work activities which I wouldn’t have been confident to deliver before this year long course. The children thrive from these more in depth activities and I know these experiences enrich their learning as I have the privilege of seeing it first hand.
It has also been great to have leaders such as Charlotte and Ed who I know I can rely on for advice, ideas and sometimes just to talk to in forest school code! And of course Soraya has given me the inspiration and experience that I need on a day to day to basis.
I’ve added some photos of my year overall and all the fun we have experienced ☺
Thank you Burrow children for being soooooooo awesome!
Your Forest School Guru x