This week was the first for many of the children and wow were they excited! We headed down into the woodland chatting about what we might see that day. Would it be deer, a rabbit or maybe a bear or a tiger! As we headed down the lane we spotted our first animals, two very friendly horses. The children were amazed at just how big the horses were. They decided to name them Barnamiel and Ria. We then headed further into the woodland. We stopped to look at the beautiful trees all around us. We looked at the colour and shape of the leaves and thought about which leaves belonged to which trees. Some of the children were able to identify the oak leaves and pointed out which tree they were from. We talked about the seeds which grow on oak trees and the children were able to identify an oak tree as growing acorns which the squirrels love to eat!
As we neared the entrance to forest school, we noticed an area with a huge accumulation of leaves. We grasped handfuls of leaves, counted to three and threw our leaves up into the air allowing them to float down around us. We repeated this trying to throw them higher and higher every time. Ruby spotted a long ditch which she realised quickly she could jump right across. It was a tricky crossing as the other side was higher so using both hands, she managed to pull herself up. Everyone else wanted to try and before we knew it, we were all jumping across the ditch. The children supported one another with encouraging words or with a helping hand. Leo was thrilled to jump across the ditch independently. “I did it” he shouted.
We walked on and found an enormous rock sitting beside the path. Camille thought she could move it so gave it a push. It was a tricky job moving a rock that big. Camille’s friends came over to help and everyone pushed but the rock would just not move so we decided to leave it for another day. Once in our forest school site, we created our camp by placing a tarpaulin on the floor. We sat down and ate our lunch which was delicious and very filling! Soon it was time to tidy up and venture onto the huge steep hills above us. Leo and Eve quickly scrambled up the hill before standing at the top to admire their achievement. The children then sat down and slid all the way to the bottom of the bank before repeating this several times. We even found a huge log to walk and balance along before engaging in more climbing. Before we knew it, the time had come to leave our woodland playground and head back to nursery. We were excited to see if our horses were still there and to our amazement they were! We said our farewells to them, promising them a carrot next week. Goodbye forest school for another week!