Fourth session of the New Year

Its interesting what the kids want to do and which tasks they seem to enjoy, stick collecting is a great favourite but it may soon be superseded by putting the hot chocolate powder in the cups ready for snack time a job once done by one of the adults.  Now a small group have taken over the job of unfolding the cups dividing the contents of the jar of hot chocolate between the cups equally and once the hot chocolate is made distributing the drinks and biscuits to the group.    

 As promised we played Forest School hide and seek this week but some of the new crew tested the rules to their limits so we may have to play again next week just so everyone feels the game is being played fairly.

We have been given some small tree whips to plant by the Woodland Trust so is was decided by the group that they would divide into two groups and one would go planting and the other would continue on wood store.  The walls on the wood store are now finished with a mammoth effort in the last minutes of today’s session as the last hazel rod was woven into place.  By not having formal groups changing from one group to the other allowed everyone to have a go at the different tasks and when they wanted to change they could. When everyone is engaged it is amazing how quiet the group is.

By next week I will have been to Devon for two days as I start my Level Three Forest School qualification (as long as it does not snow) so there will be plenty of new ideas.   

Session Three of the New Year

When you tell people that you run a Forest School club people instantly say ‘oh that’s children and knives, axes, saws and fires’ well today we got a little closer to the stereotype.

All those that wanted to, had a go at cutting wood with either a bow saw or Laplander saw this afternoon.  We had our base for the wood store built by square lashing poles together and weaving rods in between them.  The next task was to cut all the upright poles to the same length.  We use a sawhorse when sawing wood, which is made from two poles, which are square lashed together then hammered into the ground. 

The pole that is being cut is held in the sawhorse by a couple of buddies on the opposite side to where the cutting is being done.  The person using the saw holds the pole on the same side as their buddies and draws the saw back three times to make a grove ready to cut into the wood.

Once the poles where ready, the hot chocolate drunk and the biscuits munched we took turns with the mallets to hammer the poles around the base of the wood store ready to weave the walls next week.  We also worked on the den that we built last term which has been suffering with winter wind damage.  The much improved den is now big enough for everyone!      

Session two of the New Year

We are starting to think about how we are going to build our wood store, so today’s session we were experimenting with hazel rods and see what structures we could build.  We had a full house and with new names to learn and forest school rules to pass on. We started on the logs around the fire pit.  Stick collecting followed a very rowdy animal name game and after the high winds of last week there is a bounty of firewood.

I demonstrated with the aid of a volunteer square lashing which is away of joining to sticks together at right angles (I thing this may be very important when we build the floor of the wood store.  We then looked at the safe use of secateurs a tool that is very useful when shortening hazel rods.

Once we had divided everyone into three groups with a good mix of ages in each it was on to tower building with the hazel.  With as little instruction as possible the groups each tackled the challenge differently with a lot of concentration going on.

We have left the structures up until next week when we will reuse the rods as we start to plan the building of the wood store.

Good luck to the Frys as they move to the southeast and we hope they enjoyed their time at Forest School.

 

Happy New Forest School

After a very windy day, the wind had just about died down in time for us to head out to the Forest School site.  We have some new faces this term including Kate a parent volunteer so it was a good chances for the old hands to show off how well they could remember the forest school rules, and they didn’t fail.

A new term, so new animal identities for the animal name game and someone else is reindeer this term as I take on being a raccoon, with a week to think of an action to go with this masked animal, no pressure.  Apparently the best thing about Forest School is the hot chocolate and cookies a parent informed me to day so we started with how to make a campfire.

There are three elements to fire heat, fuel and air (oxygen) take one of these away and your fire goes out.  We started by talking about having permission to light a fire before even reaching for your tinderbox.  We always light a fire in a fire hearth which is clear of debris which could catch fire the surround is made of logs (stones can explode).  To build your fire you need dry, dead wood.  Some need to be the thickness of your thumb, some the thickness of a pencil and some the size of matches.  Lay a raft of the thumb thick sticks and on to them space so scrupled up newspaper.  On top of the newspaper place your matchstick size sticks making a tipi around this pile with the pencil size sticks and remember to leave a gap to light the paper.  Finally before lighting the paper put the rest of your thumb thick sticks around the tipi. 

This fire should last for 10 minutes long enough to toast marshmallows or boil a kettle.

Once the kettle was over the fire and the hot chocolate powder was in the mugs and everyone had gone and collected some firewood ready for next week we had a look a fire steels/fire sticks.  They were developed by the Swedish army during the 1950’s, unlike matches they work when wet so ideal for forest school.  Everyone had a go at lighting a cotton wool pad which we split open into a ducks bill and fluff up the inside to make it easier to light.  You scrape down the fire stick with the steel and that creates the sparks that ignite the pad.

Once everyone had had a go with the fire stick I gave a demonstration on the safe uses of a Laplander saw which we will be using over the next couple of weeks.  Then it was back to the fire pit for a round up before heading back to the school hall.

Sad start to the New Year

I've just been up to the Holt Primary School's Forest School site and discovered that there has been some damage over the holidays.   Some of the small trees have been uprooted and the arch was broken apart.  Damage rectified now so fingers crossed it doesn't happen again. 
Otherwise we are all set for the new term - See you Thursday!