nature ranger fun

Nature Ranger fun

Summer term 2016

Both groups have had a go at making a fire using a fire strike and we successfully boiled a kettle cropped-DSCF7041.jpg& heated up our crumpets . We made dens, used a compass to search our site and bring back evidence of the flora from the North South East and West.

We have played a number of running around games to let off steam and one involved knowing the names of various plants and trees.

Last week we had ago at whittling at the Coppicewood college site making ourselves butter knives to butter our crumpets.

The photo shows Ernest with both his knife and crumpet. 

We have also played with sound, movement and games for concentration. There is a lot to learn and  a lot of fun to be had so we will be continuing in the Autumn term and possibly on a Saturday.

We want to encourage more children to come a long and try it out to really build a hearty group for everyone. Phone Claire and book 01239 621 039 or email cloudtumble28@gmail.com 

The idea is that after a time children will feel comfortable and confident in their surroundings and have been shown numerous games, activities and skills can make choices about what they want to do that suits them and what they need. Forest schooling can also act as a safe place for friendships to develop and sharing, unwinding and rejigging. Nature is a healer, a beautiful home to re find. We can all see that children spend too much time on screens  and not enough wondering about and exploring.

Story telling with Cardigan school

Marie Roberts class came to the forest  garden in winter 2015 with the continual threat of rain and wind. They walked to the forest garden and back and had two hours to try out all kinds of activities, like sawing and getting the fire wood, path making, fire making, bread making over the fire, a bit of whittling, story making, poetry and games to express themselves.

They just DSCF7023revisited for a story making session where they used their imaginations and natures: shapes, leaves, sticks and paths, to contrive a journey , a story line using a piece of string along the ground from one place to another.

There were some great characters, Elara’s  here started with just this head but did develop a body and had to get off an island she was stuck on.

This one below with the square eyes  (developed by Wynne  and Kian)   had been watching screens too much and went for a walk and met a dragon.

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During the summer term children had a go at making tongs which can be used on the fire for turning over bread on the grill.  They had to measure and saw a piece of wood, then split it using a froe. Below Daniel and Ernest are using a saw horse.

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The kettles is on the fire, children wash up enthusiatically and prepare black currants for our feast, which went on for 3 hours on our last session of the summer.