Forest School At Last !

Imagine the excitement in our house this morning, Hannah has been waiting all summer for Forest School to start and today was finally the day!! The Forest School is held in an open air woodland classroom where the children can learn about nature and the season, and build self-esteem and independence through exploring and experiencing the natural world in all weathers. To begin the session today the children were told of a few safety rules and then were encourage to head off to build fairy houses around the site for the resident pixie. Hannah teamed up with her lovely friend Izzy and made a beautiful house with a fern roof, moss and bracken bed, doorway, pathway, picnic area and even a swing!


Look at these cute girls listening to instructions together!

Next they made twig fairies from tissue paper tied with long strands of wool to twigs,

and ran around and around the forest flying the fairies.

Just look at this happy little face!!

Then the children all learned how to work with wood to make their own name necklaces. The teachers demonstrated sawing and drilling the wood, and then allowed the children to each saw their own disc from a small log and drill a hole in it.

Figuring out how to make the saw cut,

and doing a really good job!

Then they made natural beads by pushing tent pegs through the soft middle of some sapling pieces, wrote their names and drew pictures on their discs, and strung them on twine.

Here's Hannah wearing hers!

The final activity was to take two beans and find a place to make a secret face. The children then searched the classroom discovering all the faces they could before saying good bye until next week.

Here is Hannah's face.

Hannah can't wait to go back again, and neither can I. She totally embraced the session and was the most confident I have seen her in any group setting ever. It was really lovely to see and i'm so proud of her.