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.