The one that got away was THIS BIG!

A wet session did not put a dampner on the crew of HMS Tinderbox as it set sail yesterday in the rain.  We contructed our own tall ship with rigging and sails and the crew went fishing.

We made our fishing rods including hooks from sticks found around the site, by cutting the V joints on branches we were able to fashion hooks.  The group had a go at tying a round turn and two half hitches to conect the rod to the hook and with the addition of some wood cookie sharks we were off to catch the big one.  The wood cookie sharks were just wood cookies with holes drilled in them to allow a piece of wire to pass through.  The piece of wire was then looped over and knoted on the back with a wiggle eye fixed on just above the gapping mouth the sharks were ready.

It wasn't all Jolly Rogers and shark fishing, there was sewing business left over from last week and using blanket stitch a quiver was fashioned.  With the rain coming down harder and harder one of the boys came up with the idea of making himself a cape from the tarp fabric used for the quiver.

Grog and ships biscuits were had in the renamed willow den now known as the Boat House.  One of the boys had been busy sweeping the floor ready for his shipmates and seeing there is only a dense foliage roof we managed to stay quite dry.

Today the sun came out and with a fresh crew we were building boats from junk.

Using a collection of old plastic bottles, those who wanted to build a boat started lashing the

botttles together, no designs were the same.  One of the boats had two masts and with hot chocolate jars adding floatation looked great, another had a wheel added to make it more like a really sailing ship.

At the end of the session we took them off to the school pond to hold a regatta, unfortunately even with yesterday's rain the pond was near to empty.  Although there was enough water for one boy to fill his wellies!!

As well as the boat building we did go fishing as well, no sharks caught today but we did catch a chocolate bisciuts.

Teach me something and I will teach you something

This week I was shown how to make a double headed daisy by one of the girls.  You take two daisy heads one with a stalk and one without.  The one without you make a hole in the centre of it with a thorn or thin sharp stick.  Through the hole you thread the stalk of the other daisy through so the backs of the two heads touch then you break off the extra stalk you don't need.

In exchange for the double headed daisy I had to show how to make and fire a bow and arrow.  This lead to a number of the group wanting to make bows all very Robin hood.  After setting some ground rules about what to shoot at we managed to get everyone home with their arrows in their hands and not through their ears.

We love making swings at Forest school and have found a variation on this instead of tying the rope off on the tree we use it to hoist the rider up in the tree (about 180cm seat to ground)  This has been going down very well unless your the adult doing the pulling up and down.  We will be investing in a couple of pulleys so the children can start to pull each other up and down as well with the addition of a stopper knot no one will come down to earth will a bump.

We made our first movie today as well a couple of the boys were using the chopping blocks in the whittling area as drums and taking it in turns to dance and sing to their crazy beats.

Finally if you you don't live next to the beach don't worry why not try making wood chip castles.

A rope, a bucket, and a couple of pulleys= Fun

Today's session was largely taken up with the challenge of getting wood chip from one point to another without walking it there.  The group were given a rope a set of pulleys a couple of wooden hooks and a lot of buckets.  One of the boys took control of the setting up of a line to hang the hooks from which they could then hang the buckets from once they were filled.  This system worked for a while but they decided to tinker with the design and in the end had one of the hooks attached to a pulley and then attached two ropes to this so the pulley ran a long the static line and was controled by the two ropes from each pile.  There was some to team work and problem solving going on, although the operating of hooking the bucket on did have its moments of conflict as they worked out a rota of whose go it was.

Our tree house had its annual changing of the ropes on Sunday and past muster by the group who like to use it.  It is checked for soundness before each session but because we uses a natural fibre rope to construct it which can become weak.  We like to remove it once a year to give the tree a break which stops the rope digging into the tree as it grows.
We were treated to cake as it was one of the boy's birthdays yesterday, we almost missed singing 'happy birthday' as he had shot off to get back to his game before we had chance to start.  He was pulled back and sung to by the group led by his elder brother.
With us all trampling around the site it is amazing the amount of wildlife we keep finding, frogs being a favourite but today we found the world biggest worm.

Its great to see the respect the group show when looking at wildlife and when we need to move it to a safer area.

The best part of Forest School is when the children lead their learning by coming up with their own ideas.  At the end of the Friday session two of the boys built a seesaw from a couple of chopping blocks and an old fence post.  They first checked the post was sound by placing it on a block and walking up it before they started seesawing on it.  The experimentation the boys used as they thought about the risk of just going for it was nice to see.

Ship Ahoy!

With a warm afternoon ahead of us we thought it would be nice to play with some water.  An old storm damaged tarp was put to good us as it was cut up to be used to make the outer skins of some sailing boats.  We started by cutting some willow and forming big bushy rings which were held together with string, these frames were then laid onto the tarp to measure how much fabric would be needed so we could get afloat.  Once the tarp was cut out, we got the needles and thread out and stitched the tarp to the frame with a stick sown across the middle of the boats to attach the masts.  The masts was square lashed to the boats and then a sail or two were stitched to them, then rigging was added to keep the masts upright and the boats were ready to sail.  Most of the crew had a go at the sewing and the making a frame.  One or two needed a little more support to get their boat sea worthy.  It important to remind the children we go at their speed, they set the pace not us. When the boats were ready we went of to the pond to float them unfortunately the pond is quite low at the moment so it was more sitting in harbour than taking to the high seas.

Not all the children wanted to make boats and those that didn't went off to play games of their own making.  One was all about lions living in the long grass at Forest School.  This is the nice thing about Forest School, it's up to you what you do and if you're not interested in the activity the majority are doing you don't have to take part, we will help you find something else to do. 

Sorry I deleted the photo of the boats afloat before adding it to the blog!