New School Forest Garden

As many of you know I'm the sort of parent that gets roped into things, I seems to have an inability to say NO at the best of times, but when it's helping kids I'm even worse.

The school library is the perfect example of this!

Blank canvas

Somehow since the spring I've been attending some small meetings with the head mistress, Felicity - the garden designer and the teacher who runs Eco-club. We've been talking and making plans to create a new forest school and vegetable garden area that the kids can use and enjoy.

Forest Schools Party!

Well we had the forest school party at the weekend and I can happily report that no children broke any limbs or spontaneously combusted!  

The party worked really well, My eldest shared it with one of her friends from school, so we as parents could share the burden a bit! 

We're lucky here as there is a village hall type building about 75 yards away, so for any parties we tend to use that. We got all the children and parents to meet us there(I live in fear of a children party where the parents leave their children for me to look after!), before I lead them over to the far field where the girls and I had set up the log circle. I'd roped my brother into manning/guarding the bonfire which worked really well (and his wife helped looking after our little boy who wasn't as happy as he could have been...)

Leaf crown on the birthday girl!

We'd set up a few activities for the kids, so they split into groups. 

The one activity was a treasure hunt I'd made up in the bottom field. Around the field I'd left different cards with pictures with animal tracks on, each track had a letter which they had to match up to a sheet they'd been given. Five different animal tracks with five letter to make up the word "Field". It was great and as I'd spaced it right round the field (with one well hidden one) they were all running all over the place, burning off lots of energy. When they got them all they got a packet of sweets as a reward.

Around the fire the children could roast some marshmallows and my brother had cut some fresh willow sticks to roast them with, we had set a limit for each child but I think there were a fair few that had more than their quota of marshmallows! 

There was also crown making with some cardboard crowns with sticky backed tape around the outside, the kids then collected leaves and grasses to stick on them. They all seemed to enjoy all of it, being outside and running about in the open space. 

We then headed back to the hall for party food (I'm going to have a major rant and moan/vent about something to do with this later in the week), all the kids were all great and really well behaved, whilst all the parents had a good chat and warmed up a bit by the heaters. 

Both the birthday boy and girl had their cakes (I had to make a second strawberry cake for this!) and blew out their candles. 

It all went really well, kids went home happy, but I was really happy when it was all over! A lot of preparation, planning and baking went into it! 

We ended up with three very tired children and two very tired parents by the end as well! I was cream crackered! 

Forest Schools Party

My eldest turns five this week (I can't believe how fast that time has gone!) so for her birthday we're going to have a shared party with one of her friends from school in a few weeks time. 

The bar has been set pretty high with the children's parties that we've attended so far, but one we really enjoyed was one set on a farm doing a few outdoor activities like den building and forest pictures. So we thought we'd try something similar and arrange a "forest school" type party here on the homestead, with the village hall type building we have near by rented out for food afterwards or in case it rains. 

A "forest" picture made on the ground

The party is going to be a couple of hours long and I have a few ideas for actives that they're going to do. The main one is I'm going to build a nice big log circle in advance so there can be a small fire burning, marshmallows can be toasted over it and it can be the meeting point when the actives are done.

What actives do you think would be good for an outdoorsy winters party for a group 20 or so of 5 year olds? 

I'll really welcome any ideas to help keep them entertained!

Forest Schools At Home

First off I'd like to say thank you to everyone that left a comment about my washing machine troubles. I'll do a post about how it was resolved tomorrow, but I'm always so impressed with the response I get here, I love this little blogging community we've built up!

Now on with today's post.

My eldest daughter , who is currently in reception at the village school, does a initiative call forest schools on a Monday afternoon at school. She absolutely loves it. 

I think this is a great idea where the kids get to go out and play in nature, they're encouraged to explore and climb trees and the sessions can be as simple as collecting leaves and as they get more older they even have camp fires. The only downside is that they're required to wear gloves at all times (I'll rant about that another day) and they only do it for the first couple of years at school before "real" learning takes over the timetable. 

Both my girls love being outside and this is something I love to encourage (as it's where I like to be as well). With the darker autumn and winter nights it becomes harder as once we're back from the school run it's already drawing in.

So last night I decided to take the girls out for an hour before tea. My sister-in-law, Helen, had been over all day looking after the children whilst I did some roofing so she came out with us and as my wife just got home from school she looked after the baby inside (he's full of cold).

I asked them if they wanted to make a fire so they picked a spot in the future pig pen. they cleared off a small area and then used their torches to find firewood and kindling.

I then lit the fire (after a couple of attempts) and we all sat round and talked about what we could cook on it.

I bought out one of my bushcraft cooking pots and some popcorn so we we popped some of that once the fire got hot enough and I gave the girls a couple of glow sticks to play with. I think this is a great way to make sure they''re not afraid of the dark! 

From unpopped...

...to burnt in seconds!

 The pop corn burnt, but it didn't matter. The girls loved sitting and talking about things and it was great to be out there with only the fire as a distraction. 

My younger daughter was getting cold and restless so Helen said she'd take her back in. My eldest then asked me:
"Is it alright if I can stay out with you and watch the fire go down daddy?" I think my heart melted a little bit when she said that!

So we sat on the dirt and watched the flames die down and talked about everything and nothing.

When we got back to the house she wanted to get the fire wood with me for the log burner and kept telling me what a fun night it was.

A great thing to do with the kids and something I want to start doing regularly. I think that sitting round a fire like this is in our DNA and it's a great way to spend quality time with ones that we love.

Who else just loves to sit by a fire outside?