A welcome return to Forest School at Pine Ridge and Lorraine Infant Schools

At last, we have been able to restart Forest School after the disruptions of the last few months.  It was wonderful to watch the children engage with the environment with confidence.

As most of Maple Class had already visited Forest School before, they took off exactly where they had left off.  They remembered all the safety rules and help their new classmates to understand what to do and why.

We started by exploring and having a good look for any bugs that were about due to the warmer weather.  Exploring included a pre-historic encampment with suitably decorated “neandertal” men, who were hunting for food and repelling boarders!

We lit the fire ready to make our hot chocolate and again they remembered the fire safety rules telling the new children in the class how we used a firesteel to light it.

After a brief explanation about The Green Man, forest folklore and how he appears in Spring to look after the forest, they set off to create their own Green Man using clay as a base.

There was an amazing array of different faces on many of the trees, with decorations ranging from leaves, feathers and twigs to one sporting lovely green hair due to a discarded pipe cleaner!  It really was a bit of a rogue’s gallery.

We concluded our session with our hot chocolate and passing around the “story stick” to create our own forest story.  It was really great to be back in the Forest!