This week we will focus on exploring the garden and home as a Forest School space. Perhaps think about setting aside chunks of time as designated ‘Forest School’ time, with some running around games, some nature observation activities, some problem-solving challenges, and an outdoor snack. This list should give you plenty of ideas!
Listen to… Stone Soup by Heather Forest (Audible Stories are free audio books for children)
Build... a mud kitchen in your garden. Find some materials and see if the children can come up with ways of balancing and arranging things to make a flat surface. Perhaps add some hooks to hang things on? The process of building a mud kitchen will be just as much fun as playing in it!
It can be very simple - at the Wetlands our mud kitchen is a plank of wood balanced on two logs, with lots of pots and pans and wooden spoons. You will need some soil or mud, and a bucket of water to mix it with. Paintbrushes mean you can make muddy paint and face paint, great for giant painting on fabric or big pieces of paper, or on your face!
Decorate... a sign that says Mud Kitchen!
Make... your own stone soup. Use a big pot or bucket and a long stirring stick, add mud, water, leaves, stones, flowers… pour it out in cups or bowls for all your teddies!
Find… somewhere in the garden where you can dig a hole so deep you can try to get inside it! Gardening tools, pointy sticks, sandcastle toys are all useful for digging. See if you can spot any wiggly worms…
Chop… potatoes, carrots, leeks, the way that we’ve learned to chop apples at Forest School, and cook soup for your lunch. Children help with the cooking a lot at Forest School, and practise learning how to use a knife, making sure their fingers are out of the way, and enjoying the experience of cooking for each other
Gather… natural materials from your garden or the park, begin to sort them into piles or tupperware boxes, or onto a nature tray… pine cones, seed pods, leaves, grass, feathers will all be useful natural art materials in the coming weeks
Explore… your garden and follow this Spring Scavenger Hunt, ticking off each of the things you find
Play… 1,2,3, Where Are You: someone counts to 10, while the others run as far away as they can in that time. When you reach 10 you shout 1,2,3 Where Are You? The others reply 1,2,3 We’re Here! You then count back down to zero. They have 10 seconds to get back to you again
Try… The Tree Hugging Game: one person is blindfolded, the other guides them to a tree (or any other plant/object in your garden or home). They can touch the tree/object and get a sense of what it feels like, but cannot remove the blindfold. They are then led away again by the other person. They then remove the blindfold, and try to find their tree/object!
Relax… on a rug or a tarp, wrap up warm and do some cloud-watching, see if you can spot any shapes or animals in the sky
Draw… pictures of the things that you collect, spot in the garden, and create, and send them back to me!
Many more ideas to come, so that we can keep Forest Schooling in these strange times. Do comment with your ideas and photos and I’ll circulate them too, so that we can create a Forest School at Home network!