7 February 2025

It was lovely to get back to Forest School Friday today, after a few weeks missed due to adverse weather and special school events. It was a bright and clear day, cold but sunny, with a bit of a breeze. Some of the boys and girls in P7 were joining us today and we decided it would be a good day to light the campfire. Our Forest School sessions run for an hour on Fridays, and the last time we lit the campfire it was tight time-wise to allow everyone a chance to cook a treat and return to school for lunch, tidied, washed and ready to eat. So today we decided that we would light the fire a bit earlier. My Forest School colleague and I took the opportunity to set up and light the fire while the children had their break-time. We used extra boundary flags today to mark some particularly marshy areas as ‘out of bounds’ and used some of the bamboo canes, tarps and pegs to create a windbreaker near our log circle. An adult remained with the fire at all times while the children were getting ready.
Once dressed in waterproofs and wellies, the children sat in our seating area in the playground and listened to the plans for the day. The children were great at remembering the 3 rules of Forest School and shared them with their P7 friends. We reminded the children of our ‘dragon’ rules to keep everyone safe when the fire was lit. We then sang our Forest School song as we walked in a line to the site, gathering at the log circle. The children were enthralled by the fire, finding it very mesmerising! They were able to remember from our last session why a bucket of water was beside the fire and explained this to our visiting P7s. They all remembered our instructions about finding a log seat carefully and not walking across the log circle to choose a seat. Once everyone was sitting comfortably, the children took turns to suggest some campfire songs for us to sing together. We then allowed the children some free play time, with some choosing to dig, explore or use the mud kitchen, and some choosing to remain at the log circle and watch the fire. Adults supervised and encouraged the children in their play, with two of us remaining at the fire and inviting children to become ‘orange dragons’ and approach the fire under supervision to toast a marshmallow. This was possible due to the number of adults out with us today, along with our P7s, and worked well in giving everyone the chance to toast a marshmallow but also enjoy some unstructured time. The children responded well to ‘one whistle’ or ‘two whistles’ and followed instructions carefully. It was lovely to see teamwork between the different age groups and to see the younger children enjoy ‘teaching’ the older children about what we do at Forest School. Every child, both our younger regular Forest School attendees and our older P7s, gave an enthusiastic ‘thumbs up’ to show their enjoyment at the end of the session. Our younger ones informed our older ones that we always ‘leave no trace’ and everyone worked together to tidy the area and return sticks, pans etc. to their respective areas. Children were chosen to carry out jobs such as fetching in the boundary flags, remembering to carry them correctly, folding the tarps, gathering pegs and carrying equipment. Our wellies were incredibly muddy today and we changed our footwear outside before returning to the classroom to scrub our hands and get ready for lunch.