14 March 2025

Today was World Maths Day and so we decided to use this as our focus for our Forest School session. As it was just a few days until St. Patrick’s Day, we planned to incorporate some related activities and suggestions into our free play session at the end.
The sun was shining but the ground was still damp and so we geared up with puddle suits and welly boots. We gathered at the seating circle, recapped our Forest School rules and explained the main activities for the day. We set out the boundary flags prior to the session, as our first activity was a number hunt and we didn’t want to spoil the surprise! The children explored the site, looking for logs with numerals 0-20 written on them, and then gathered natural materials to make the corresponding set for each number. After gathering everyone in with 2 blows of the whistle, they enjoyed showing their work to each other. We then talked about how we would need to gather all the numbered logs in (in preparation for ‘leaving no trace’ at the end) and the children set to work, finding them all and gathering them into a pile. We discussed the problem of trying to ensure that we had them all and none were missing. One child suggested counting the logs, and thought that we should have 20. Another child suggested putting them all in order to see if any numerals were missing. By doing this, we discovered that numeral 6 was missing and a few children went on a hunt to find and retrieve it. The children then counted all the logs and were very surprised to find that we had 21, not 20. They wondered how this was possible, as they knew the last number was 20, until a few children worked out that we needed to include ‘0’ in our count, therefore making 21 logs altogether.
After this, we split the children into small groups and gave each group a ‘measuring worm’. The children were tasked with finding 5 natural items that were longer than the worm, 5 natural items that were shorter than the worm, and seeing if they could find anything the exact length of their worm. The children had great fun completing this task and showing their work to each other at the end.
We finished the session with a short time of free play. We had previously made ‘Shamrock viewers’ from cardboard and the children enjoyed finding and holding these against various green things, such as the hedge, grass, someone’s green puddle suit, to make green shamrocks. Some children used the free time to play at the mud kitchen, dig and search for ‘treasure’ or just enjoy walking around the site looking for flowers.
We ensured that we ‘left no trace’ at the end, and every child showed a ‘thumbs up’ to indicate that they had enjoyed the session.