Friday 4th November

Today’s theme was Bonfire Night. We read a bonfire night story & talked about our plans to visit local bonfires & watch fireworks. Then the children had the chance to create their own bonfire painting using toilet roll fire work ‘stamps’ & glitter! We were really lucky with the weather this week which gave us chance for lots of free play at our forest school site, which we hadn’t used as much as we’d like towards the end of last term with so many rainy Fridays! We finished our session with hot chocolate & toasted marshmallows.

Friday 7th October

This week was another wet one so we stayed inside to read our story about Olive the owl who could only say t’wit & needed someone who could say t’woo! Then we did some crafting, making owls out of toilet rolls. Some brave children had lots of free play outside & when the rain stopped we all played ‘rabbit, frog, owl’ & a game of ‘owl eyes’ spotting hidden objects. As we couldn’t have a fire today we had hot chocolate & a chocolate biscuit. Let’s hope we have a dry afternoon next Friday!

Friday 30th September 

Our theme this week was The Great Big Green Week & we read Tidy which is all about a badger who wants the forest he lives in to be tidier but he goes too far & cuts down all the trees & concretes everything over before realising that nature is best left a little untidy! We talked about what we like about our world & how we can look after it.

We had a very different session this week as it was so rainy & windy we decided to stay at school. We had some very wet free play in the playground & in the park & then came inside for some crafting & hot chocolate!

Friday 23rd September

Today we read The Very Helpful Hedgehog which was a story about a hedgehog, a donkey & some apples. We took inspiration from the story to play upside down apple bobbing where we put slices of apple on some string & tried to eat them without using our hands - we got some great pictures! Then we did some crafting making hedgehogs out of card, cutting a hole in the middle and filling it with sticky back plastic which we had added natural objects like leaves and grass to. The children were very pleased with their finished hedgehogs. Before the session finished we lit the fire & toasted marshmallows.

Friday 16th September

This week we read Badger & the Great Storm & talked about how the weather is starting to change now it’s nearly autumn. We used blackberries to create some tie dye and had lots of free play. As always we finished our session by toasting marshmallows over the fire, singing our goodbye song & walking back to school for home time.

Friday 24th June

This week was all about mini beasts. We read a book & talked about our favourite mini beasts.
We learned that an insect has 6 legs as well as how long a honey bee lives for & other interesting facts.
We made mini beast pictures, using feathers as a quill/paint brush.
We had free play in the river & found some insects on the field too.
As a special treat for Emma’s last week before her holiday we had s’mores today before heading back to school.

Next week another Emma will be leading the session & the children are going to show her how well they know our rules & sing her our Forest school song.

Friday 20th May

Today was all about plants. We read ‘the seedling that didn’t want to grow’ & then had a go at sowing our own seeds which we hope will want to grow! The children have taken some home & a few have stayed at our forest school site so that we can all watch them grow together.

We also tried to identify some of the flowers on our site. There are lots about at the minute including bluebells, cuckoo flowers, buttercups & dandelions.

We had a brief downpour today which almost stopped us from having a fire but luckily it stopped as suddenly as it started & we managed to get a good fire going for this week’s fire snack - toasted fruit sweets.

Friday 13th May

It was lovely to be back after a week on holiday (where Miss Sweatmore stepped in to run the session!)

We read a book called ‘Home’ & talked about what kind of homes different animals have. Then we made lots of different types of ‘homes’ from natural materials for animals as well as using ropes & tarp for human sized dens.

Our fire snack this week was marshmallows which the children really enjoyed, having not had any for a couple of weeks!