Subject Lead: Ms S Burns
- Forest School at The Ryde School (127.73KB)
Exploring Forest School at The Ryde School
Year 4 sessions
Autumn term 2022
During Forest School sessions the children have chosen new and challenging activities to explore and engage with as well as revisiting those enjoyed in past years. They have been further developing their skills especially in sculpting with clay and in woodwork. They continue to extend their knowledge of plants and animals in the school grounds and are getting very good at bird identification. The photos below show a selection of the range of activities during the term
Reception Class sessions
October 2022
Reception class have established routines for getting ready to go outside to the ‘Wild Area’ on a Friday morning where we have Forest School.
A theme of how we use all our senses in Forest School, with a different focus each week- sight, hearing, touch, smell, movement and taste, has enabled the children to explore and learn through a range of activities.
The children have learnt a short song to sing at the start of the journey around the school grounds to the Wild Area. Each week we stop to observe the cherry tree outside Nursery to look for seasonal changes and explore with our senses, for example what is the feel and texture of the bark and leaves, the colours and shapes we can see and listen for rustling of leaves in the wind.
The journey continues along the willow edged path and the children have spent time collecting coloured autumn leaves and sycamore ‘helicopter seeds’ around the stage area. When we reach the Apple tree circle at the far side of the field, the children then all join in an action song ‘Kelele’ practising actions to move to when we feel cold.
The children continue their journey along the ‘hedge on the edge’ of the field looking closely for plants or insects hiding in the hedgerow. We have seen spider webs, snails, blackberries and stinging nettles.
Each week when we arrive at the large trees in the Wild Area – we play our safety games of 1,2,3 where are you? and the Stop game.
There are lots of different shape leaves which have fallen off the large trees and acorns to collect during this time too.
We have started to share with the children the names and features of trees and plants we see on the journey to the wild area and have shared pictures of birds which are the house group names, so far we have covered: Robins, Finches and Wagtails.
The children have learnt the boundaries of Forest School and have become familiar with playing safely with sticks and the equipment we have for them to use e.g. hammock, bug hunting, mud kitchen and the brushes and rakes for the leaves have been popular for collecting the fallen leaves.
Photographs are taken each week of some of the different activities during Forest School and some are printed out for the class Forest School book, with some going on the Forest School noticeboard in class too as reminders of some of the plants and animals the children have observed in the school grounds.