Summer Term

This terms Forest School we have learned lots of new skills, had some fun experiences and asked lots of questions. We started off the term with practicing our knife and peeler skills through making a soup for the Gruffalo. Then did some den building for an Owl that had fallen out of its nest. We had a Gruffalo and seasons story adventure and finished with some fire lighting, where the children chose to make either toast or smores. 

Autumn Term.

This half terms Forest School Planning Theme is..... "Colour"

Rainbow Pictures

The aim of this experience is to create a nature rainbow finding different colours in the environment and making a rainbow picture out of them

Splatter Painting

The aim of this experience is to flick paint at the paper to create big art work of colours, you could link this to fireworks

CD Craft

The aim of this experience is to make an outside wind chime out of nature and a CD attaching them via string and glue.

Journey Sticks

These are sticks the children can make anything out of, could be a friend, a wand, a magic stick, a story telling stick etc (they can use ribbon, string and nature to decorate their journey stick

Sparklers 

Sparklers are a great activity to start to teach them not only about fireworks but also the safety of fire. If you do this activity please remember a carrot to hold the sparkler and some gloves to protect their hands.

Christmas Craft 

This experience is similar to the journey stick bit the children help to tie ribbon around the stick and it is cut to a triangle shape to make  a Christmas tree decoration.

Next Half Terms Topic is "Safety" 

September 2020.

This half terms Forest School Planning Theme is..... "All about me and What I Like"

Photo Frames 

The aim of this activity is to create a nature frame, sticking lots of things found in the garden and added to the frame. 

Clay Faces

The aim of this activity is to create a face out of clay or salt dough and nature, you may want to add photos of them or mirrors to see what features they have. 

Walk

The aim of this activity is to get to know the children, you could do a treasure hunt type walk where characters are hidden around the local area, eg. a Mum, dad, Nan, Grandad, sister, brother or even pets.

Windmill 

Instructions attached on this video.... children could draw a picture of them or use their favourite colours

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZrP2vSqhQ4

Positive Pebbles

The aim of this activity is to draw a picture or positive picture on some pebbles and put them in the local area to make someone smile, especially at these difficult times.

Fly It High 

Have a go at making some kites with your family on them, Who lives in your house? What pets do you have? What does your house look like?

Next Half Terms Topic is "Colour" I will send this out on the week beginning 19th October :D 

Have Fun With These Activities

Autumn Term

We started the Autumn Term with a lovely autumnal walk, where we looked at the leaves changing colour and playing with the leaves throwing them up in the air. The children were then challenged to a memory game remembering the natural items on the tray and taking it in turns to take an item away, getting their friends to guess what they had in their hands. 

On week 3, the children learned how to safely use a potato peeler where they found sticks and whittled them into pencils for using as writing resources in the settings messy trays. The children then enjoyed making their own models out of play-dough and finding natural resources in the Pre-School garden to find out what prints the objects make.

Week 5 consisted of another tool, the children took it in turns to use the hand drill making holes in conkers to make an outdoor abacus for the Pre-School garden, using their maths skills to count how many conkers they had put on. The children where then taught how to light fires using pixie pillows (cotton wool and Vaseline) and a dragon sneeze (flint and steel). 

On week 7 the children wanted to create pictures, using the pre-school garden we collected natural items and made colourful pictures by sticking them onto paper. The children then used their listening ears to listen to a story all about fairies, dragons and unicorns learning all about the seasons as the dragons like the hot seasons (Spring/Summer) and the Unicorns like the cold seasons (Autumn and Winter). 

Week 9 we learnt how to use a "real" hammer and nails, nailing into pumpkins and learning how to safely remove the nails too. 

The last week of this term involved lots of listening as a T-rex had lost his eggs and babies, we had to listen carefully to where we could hear the babies in the garden. Wow what a busy term, next term each setting will have their own project to complete, keep an eye out to what your child's forest school project is.

W/C 29th April 2019

This week the children had a story adventure, we went on a bear hunt. We put used our hands as our feet and went through sensory boxes of grass, mud, water, bark, and snow.  The children then explained what each box smelt or felt like, describing the texture of the boxes content.

This week we did clay models the children were allowed to make their own model some that consisted of dinosaurs, hospitals, faces, The Gruffalo or creatures. They stuck natural resources that they could find around them and stuck them into their clay the children had a fantastic time getting dirty and took the clay models home, showing their friends and family what they have made. "I'm making a dinosaur, roar" explained a child from Giffard Park.

W/C 17th September 2018
This week the children had a story adventure, we went on a bear hunt. We put on wellie boots and went through sensory boxes of grass, mud, water, bark, and snow to then enter the bears cave and find a bear inside.  The children then continued to play with the sensory boxes, mixing the contents together and kept retelling the story.

W/C 21st September 2018
This week we focused on birds and our environment, we made bird feeders out of old toilet tube rolls and spread butter using a knife over the tube, before rolling it into the bird seed and putting string to hang it up. The children hung some bird feeders up in the preschool garden and took some home to put in their gardens. "I have birds in my garden" explained a child from Stoke Hammond "It's called a black bird"

W/C 1st October 2018
This week we made den out of rope, tarpaulin, tent pegs and a mallet the children put the Rope up against two trees and hung the tarpaulin over it, the children were then allowed to use the Mallet to hammer in the pegs to make a tent shaped den before having a story read to them. Lots of them wanted to do it again. 

W/C 8th October 2018
This week the children with learning about safety we made cheese and ham toasties and cooked them on a safe and controlled fire. The children took part in putting the toasties together then carefully placing them onto the fire and waiting until they where cooked. All the children tried some and a child from Newton Leys said "I made this, wow"

W/C 11th October 2018
This week we went on a walk to find autumn things in our environment the children had fun going for a walk and finding leaves sticks trees footprints and some sites even saw boats on the canal. the children did very well to what was being asked and knew that if we had to cross the road we had to look left and right to make sure nothing was coming. At some sites the children decided to play with the leaves we threw them up into the air and watch the wind take them off through the Sky

W/C 5th November 2018
This week's Forest School adventure was doing tree and leaf rubbings we found lots of different patterns in our environment from leaves trees bark the pavement and bricks. The children all helped me to create a picture using the outside environment in the preschool garden we had fun looking at different coloured leaves and how the crayons matched different colours in our environment

W/C 12th November 2018 
The children learnt this week how to use sparklers safely every child had the opportunity to hold a sparkler some children were a bit scared as they never help one before so others were quite confident and showed their peers how to hold it safely some children did not want to hold a sparkler though were encouraged to watch the sparkler as it went down though nearing the end of the sparkler they held it themselves "wow this is cool" said a child from Abbey's School

W/C 19th November 2018
This week is a story week we focused on a story telling hunt, about unicorns, fairies and dragons. "Once upon a time in a little fairy village live some fairies, unicorns and dragons. One day the unicorns and dragons had an argument with each other because the unicorns liked the cold weather and the dragons liked the hot weather. No one knew what to do, then an idea sprung into the littlest fairies head, "why dont we have 4 seasons, 2 hot and 2 cold" everyone thought that was a great idea. Therefore the dragons had fun in the spring and summer and the unicorns had fun in the autumn and winter, and they all lived happily ever after." Once the story had finished the children had fun to look around the garden to find the cheeky characters who had hidden, the children matched the characters to the story scenes.

W/c 26th November 2018
This week we have had fun with paint we got sponges and put them into the paint before placing them onto paper and using a hammer to hit the sponge it made a big mess on our paper they look like fireworks like the sparklers we had had a couple of weeks ago the children explored how the primary colours mixed together made different colours on the paper.