Indoor Outdoor

The past few months in Somerset have been somewhat soggy, so the forest school area quickly became a mud bath and we made the decision to stay out of it. Some days the rain was so torrential that we even decided to stay inside as the children would have been soaked in seconds.


Simple bird cakes

So we had some indoor outdoor forest school sessions. Our theme was inspired by garden birds, and to get us started we played a great game on the RSPB website.  Rook's Binocular Birdwatch helped us to learn a few of the birds we might see in a fun and engaging way.
We then made our own paper bird planes using the template from Nature Detectives, making sure we used the right colours that we had learnt with Rook.
Another great session was making simple bird feeders. Made by mixing melted lard with bird seed. A length of wool or string had a big fat knot - the bigger the better - was used to join the ends together to make a loop. The mix was pushed into a plastic cup, The knot was buried well into the mix and then put into the fridge to set.

Packing the mix.

Another activity which engrossed us for ages was building our own bird's nests using only materials we could find around school.

A beautiful nest

Everyone agreed that it wasn't as easy as we thought it would be! Birds only have their beaks and we have two hands!


A nest in a bush - with everything carefully arranged.

We also of course spotted birds around the school - and to our amazement discovered a blackbird nest right outside the library window! We have now started watching the nest, and even though there are lots of people around Mrs Blackbird is still sitting in it. Now if only Springwatch could send us a film crew!

Taken a distance - Mrs Blackird