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Hi all, just wondering if any of you are doing forest school activities, and if you could share things that really work and the children enjoy, so far, we have made dens, mud pie faces, exploring the wood, bark rubbings, magic painting, finding woodland colours, painting with mud, spider's web with wool.............be grateful if any of you have more ideas Thanks

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Hi there

 

Yes, all the ones you mentioned are very popular, especially mud tree faces. Whittling is very popular too. We are lucky to have lots of elder nearby. Our children also enjoy making crowns using the double sided sticky tape when we go out on a walk and the 'curtain' you can make with three or four objects collected and tied onto a length of string, all hung up together. I did a parents workshop and am planning another for April. In the first one we made bookmarks (same principle as the crowns) - colours of the rainbow is a good one. This time I am planning to do the 'biscuits' (two slivers of hazel wood sawn carefully and with a treasure sandwiched (with an elastic band) in between. Lovely!

 

 

Lesley

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Our double sided sticky tape never seems to work, our willow dome was just cut so they really enjoyed making crowns from the willow, going to do some wittling using potato pealers.

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Hi all, just wondering if any of you are doing forest school activities, and if you could share things that really work and the children enjoy, so far, we have made dens, mud pie faces, exploring the wood, bark rubbings, magic painting, finding woodland colours, painting with mud, spider's web with wool.............be grateful if any of you have more ideas Thanks

 

What's magic painting?

 

We've walked round the woods with mirrors under our chins and looked at the reflections we can see of clouds, treetops etc. Have mad crowns using cardboard bands with sticky back plastic on and leaves, twigs etc from woods stuck on them - they really look amazing. Andy Goldsworthy type sculptures with natural objects. Dens for us and nests / homes for our crow puppet! Trails for each other to follow. Hunted for signs of living things - pawprints, poo etc! Measured tree trunks - how many children fit round this tree? Which tree is biggest, has most children fitting round them?

 

Have you had forest school training? We haven't but have a woods really close to our school and go there all the time. Wood (ha ha!) love to have training but not sure how expensive and whether HT would be convinced. Do people do forest schools all through primary successfully? How much does training etc cost?

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These activities and ideas sound absolutely wonderful! Makes me feel really excited for what we could be doing to develop our school. Sorry nothing to offer back but thank you for sending a buzz of excited anticipation. Can you recommend any useful websites? Many thanks. luluj

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making beads out of elder - push the pithy bit out and saw into little pieces to make beads

make a fire, use 2 sieves together to make popcorn so the children can investigate change

make a 'spider web' to climb and balance on - rope tied in different ways between trees

make a pulley using ropes over trees

flour trails to find hidden treasure

making bows and arrows

not sure if these are 'forest school' activities but this is what we do in the woods :o

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What's magic painting?

 

We've walked round the woods with mirrors under our chins and looked at the reflections we can see of clouds, treetops etc. Have mad crowns using cardboard bands with sticky back plastic on and leaves, twigs etc from woods stuck on them - they really look amazing. Andy Goldsworthy type sculptures with natural objects. Dens for us and nests / homes for our crow puppet! Trails for each other to follow. Hunted for signs of living things - pawprints, poo etc! Measured tree trunks - how many children fit round this tree? Which tree is biggest, has most children fitting round them?

 

Have you had forest school training? We haven't but have a woods really close to our school and go there all the time. Wood (ha ha!) love to have training but not sure how expensive and whether HT would be convinced. Do people do forest schools all through primary successfully? How much does training etc cost?

 

 

It is just different coloured water in bottles with paintbrushes and you can add glitter, it works better on a dry day, also painting with mud. I did a taster course which was one day around £120, they give you enough ideas for 6 weeks and then the idea is that the children then lead the play and exploration. On the course they did say it was alot of work to do the level 3 course but you can pretty much do everything you want as long as you don't call yourself a forest school. I just do it with reception at the moment but next year we are hoping that year 1 will do it too.

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Does anyone know where we can get some willows from for an outdoor feature - we need some really long ones not just short ones to thread through a sculpture. I am in Birmingham so needs to be postal delivery or close to us.

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Can you explain about pop corn in 2 sieves please it sounds wonderful. Thanks Anne

 

It's just 2 sieves wired together and held over the fire - with the kernels inside obviously :o then held over the fire so that teh childre can actually see the kernels popping and changing into popcorn

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Can you explain about pop corn in 2 sieves please it sounds wonderful. Thanks Anne

 

 

First time trying it but it worked well, we lit the fire, then you put the popcorn in a metal sieve, cover it with another sieve, it gets to the right heat and starts popping. The children loved watching it pop

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  • 11 months later...
What's magic painting?

 

We've walked round the woods with mirrors under our chins and looked at the reflections we can see of clouds, treetops etc. Have mad crowns using cardboard bands with sticky back plastic on and leaves, twigs etc from woods stuck on them - they really look amazing. Andy Goldsworthy type sculptures with natural objects. Dens for us and nests / homes for our crow puppet! Trails for each other to follow. Hunted for signs of living things - pawprints, poo etc! Measured tree trunks - how many children fit round this tree? Which tree is biggest, has most children fitting round them?

 

Have you had forest school training? We haven't but have a woods really close to our school and go there all the time. Wood (ha ha!) love to have training but not sure how expensive and whether HT would be convinced. Do people do forest schools all through primary successfully? How much does training etc cost?

 

I'm just doing the level 3 practitioner training - it is absolutely fantastic. We have done it as a borough, so i'm not sure about costs, but this is the company that is doing our training and they come highly recommended!

http://www.forestschooltraining.co.uk/

Other useful sites are:

 

http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/schools.nsf/o...02575450054B510

 

http://schools.norfolk.gov.uk/index.cfm?s=...mp;p=1127,index

 

http://www.foresteducation.org/

 

I hope these are helpful

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