Today we arrived at forest school and walked straight to our site ready to start our day. On arrival, we chatted briefly about keeping safe but the children were keen to get busy. Some children chose to work on the den, others explored the bouncy log whilst a few children chose to practice climbing the tree.

Later in the morning some children began exploring the boundaries of our site. They wondered how they could get to the hill but were met with a huge boggy swamp and nettles. We wondered if there was another way to explore the hill so we began looking around. We found an old bridge which a previous group of children had made but it was beginning to look old. We decided to rebuild the bridge so we could cross. It was hard work to find big branches and even more tricky to move them to the right place. The children worked as a team to carry the biggest branches to the bridge. They were then placed in between the existing branches to repair the bridge.

Once complete, we headed across the bridge. This would be the beginning of a forest school adventure! We looked around and wondered how we would get back to our camp. Some children thought we could turn left whilst other thought we could head right. We voted and the decision was to turn right. We headed up the boggy hill, navigating ferns, squishy mud and fallen trees. Once at the top we thought about which way we would walk. Both choices meant we had to climb up hills, balance walking back down hills and finally walk back along the path back to our site. This provided the children with many opportunities to develop their skills in balancing, negotiating spaces and compromise.