Pupils enjoy a tree-mendous time at Forest School

Published on isbi School News dated Tuesday 3rd of January 2023

It was a cold, crisp and snowy day for our last Forest School session for this term. As we walked towards the site, we saw tracks left by animals: foxes, rabbits and squirrels. We even spotted tracks left by hopping birds and could guess the moment whey took flight.

To keep us warm during this weather, we played our favourite game, Squirrels! Since the last time we played, the students are much quicker at communicating with other students and making trees as a result. Next, we taught the students a new game called Secret Stone, which involves one team concealing an object in one person’s hands and has to get it in the opposite goal. The other members of the team also need to conceal their empty hands to mislead the other team. The students really enjoyed running around and avoiding being caught.

For the rest of the session, the students had the opportunity to use the bow saw and hand drill to make snowmen and reindeer decorations. This included a lot of different skills: physical strength to use the bow saw, perseverance to keep going and hand-eye coordination to thread ribbon and pipe cleaners through the holes of their decorations. We also had students enjoying digging in the mud and balancing on the slackline, building core strength.

To warm us up, we finished with a fire where we gathered around and enjoyed cooking some popcorn. It was fun to watch it start to pop and was delicious to eat. Whilst we waited for it to cook, we sang lots of songs to keep warm and to be in the festive spirit.

The students did very well on a challenging cold day!