Day 139 - Forest School

I spent the day at Carsington Water...

...for the second of Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Forest School days.

We had three sessions again, family forest school, then a kids only session and then another family session, so that's forest school from 10:30am - 5pm - quite a long day out in the woods, but good.

At the family sessions, we first set boundaries by hanging out little Green Man pictures around the boundary which the children (and their adults!) had to find. Then they went on a leaf hunt to see how many different trees / leaves they could identify and then played 'meet a tree' (a brilliant game). Once they'd had enough enough of that the group came back to the circle and, after a bit of talk about the Green Man, everyone went off with a lump of clay to make their own Green Man on a tree, a guardian for that tree. Before leaving, the group chose a bit of natural treasure to leave as a gift for their Green Man.

This month's kids only session involved learning a couple of knots (clove hitch and shear lashing), then using that to help construct mini shelters. We also made journey sticks and the children did some tree climbing too.