Happy Friday

This week I want to join in with a lovely idea on Planet Penny's blog - Happy Friday! I love this blog, it is in my 'real crafty favourites' folder, and Happy Friday is such a good idea.
This week I have been on a two day forest school skills course, where I have spent two days out in the woods. To be honest I was expecting it to be cancelled as the weather forecast was awful!!
So yesterday, we lit fires, made shelters, put shelters back up again when they blew down, practised knots, lashing, frapping as well as learning how to make tent pegs and our own mallet. I came home, had a bath at 7pm and went to bed at 8pm!!

Happy Friday!

Today, we lit fires, redid our shelter, made a new one, lit fires, cooked food on open fires, make a 'skellington' (as Jon called it) and went on a leaf hunt several times! I came home shattered and stinking of wood smoke, and expect to continue to do so for some time!

The little wooden 'hut' was our Thunderbox toilet!

Why don't you visit Planet Penny as join in as well?

Leaf Lantern

This is something I have done at Forest School but equally you could do at home and the results are fabulous (if I say so myself!!!)

Leaf lantern when lit

One of the images I love on Pinterest are those of leaf lanterns made with autumn leaves. So I spent half term experimenting with different glues and ways to make a simple leaf lantern.
I used a clean jam jar, autumn leaves, pva or school glue, a rubber band and some raffia at the end to pretty it up with. I tried different glues - a glue stick, Copydex, but they didn't work nearly as well.

In daylight

'Paint' the jar with some pva glue. Then wrap a leaf around. Paint on more pva over the leaf and add another leaf, overlapping it. Keep painting on glue and wrapping leaves until the jar is covered. Carefully add a rubber band to hold them in place and leave to dry.

When they are dry you can swap the band for a piece of raffia or a ribbon to look pretty.
Pop a night light inside and wait a few seconds after it is lit.

The colours are beautiful

Please BE VERY CAREFUL when lighting the night light inside the jar, and DO NOT LEAVE IT UNATTENDED.

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

Forest School Log - Ice Mobiles

Ice mobiles

The week started out  with a frost, so I decided this week's forest school would make use of it. So we made ice mobiles. These are very easy to make and like all the other forest school activities can be easily done at home.
The children donned their wellies and we squelched and sloshed about looking for 'interesting things'. They mostly chose natural objects, leaves, berries, fir cones and daisies! It shows how mild it is to find daisies in January!!!

arrange your findings

These were carefully arranged in ice-cream tubs, but you could also cut down milk containers and use the 'tub' that produces. A large loop of wool (or string) was also laid in the arrangement and then water carefully poured over, just enough to cover the contents. Making sure one end of the loop was well down in the water and the other half is draped out of the tub.
My plan had been to leave them out to freeze, but the weather became milder and the rain started - again. So I put them carefully in the freezer. When they were ready, a quick dip in some warm water to loosen them and then they were hung on a tree to bob in the wind. The children loved them and so did I!
I thought I would add this to Handmade Monday this week, as something different to make!! Why not see what everyone else is up to?

 



Forest School Log - Mud!!!!!

As I have posted before I am lucky enough to teach Forest School four afternoons a week, and to be honest they are the best afternoons!
This week it has been very muddy in our little patch, and because it gets so much use it has just got muddier and muddier. The activity the children and I came up with was building our own walkway over the mud using the materials we could find. Mind you, it still didn't stop them playing 'Stuck in the mud' for real, skidding in the mud and 'accidently' falling over!
It was interesting to see how the different classes tackle the activity. One class made stepping stones using logs, whilst another laid them down next to each other. I also loved seeing the co-operation, kindness, encouragement and bravery that was happening.



Yummy hot chocolate!

We even ended up on Wednesday drinking hot chocolate in the rain - and guess what, I was told it tasted even better! (I thought it might have had something to do with the mini marshmallows myself!)

Forest School Log - Autumn smells

As many of you know, my day job is a key stage 1 teacher, and the best part of my days are forest school. I 'do' forest school three times a week with three different classes, and quite often I am looking for activities, so I thought I would share some of mine with you. My sessions with the children only last for half an hour for one group up to an hour for another group, and I generally have half a class at a time. This half term has been all about senses and this week we have made autumn smells!

Autumn smells

This involved collecting the plastic tubs that you can buy lovely cakey goodies from M&S in, I have now collected 12 and they are brilliant for all sorts of things- ideal size for little people to use and have good lids. Any excuse to eat the contents really!!!
The children worked in pairs to collect autumn things from the forest school (after a reminder about not eating anything) and stir them with a little water using a stick. One group of boys found a small log and put the pot on the floor, gathered round and took it in turns to mash it altogether using the log as a pounding tool.
A lot of sharing, turn taking, describing words, discussions and smelling went on. The children were absorbed and would have carried on but we ran out of time. All agreed that it was a lovely smell, not what they'd predicted, and some looked beautiful as well.