FOREST SCHOOL
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At Footprints, we believe in giving children access to as many natural materials as possible, both indoors and outdoors, throughout the year. In the spring and summer, we love to go for walks in the woods to look at the wildflowers that grow there, the shoots on the trees, and the shoots in the ground. There are usually families of ducklings to watch, dragonflies and ladybirds and sometimes we can spot some frogspawn in the pond. In the garden, we often find a frog hopping about, birds using our bird feeder, and, if we are very lucky, a family of bluetits using our bird box. At Easter time, the older children watch the hatching of some chicks and watch their feathers develop. All rooms watch the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies and watch them fly away free. In the autumn, there are blackberries to pick and taste and treasures such as crab apples, acorns, and rose hips to collect, leaves to throw, kick and sweep and fruit and vegetables to pick and taste. Tall sunflowers provide a fun way for children to measure themselves against nature. Even in winter, there are delights to be found, as Jack Frost visits and the weather turns crisp and wintry.
Forest School
Footprints Forest School sessions have proven very popular. The children love being in the woods, they laugh and chat the whole time we are there and they spontaneously organise their own activities in all areas of learning. They have learned to keep themselves safe; the older children reminding the younger ones to keep away from the edge of the pond and to mind the nettles. We can allow them to run in amongst the trees and play hide and seek without constantly worrying where they are because we trust them to never stray too far from us.
Outside activities
The activities we have planned have included den building, tree climbing, woodland crowns, a mini-beast hunt, looking for animal homes, signs of Spring, a colour search, seed collection, blackberry picking, a wild flower hunt, treasure hunts, leaf collage, a dinosaur hunt, frogspawn watch and many other things but I think what the children enjoy most is to be free to do whatever they wish, to play together, to sit and contemplate, to lie in the grass, to sing, to look for mini beasts, to walk and run on different surfaces, to play imaginative games in amongst the trees and to just be themselves. They come back to the classroom tired but happy, relaxed and with a sense of well being that cannot be achieved in front of a computer or television.
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