The past week has been so damp and grey here. On Monday it was grey and misty everywhere with thicker fog on the hills. I saw a sparrowhawk on my way to school (I've seen quite a few lately)...
I had a few minutes to spare after taking my grandmother shopping, and before heading to school on Tuesday morning, so I stopped on my way and spent a few minutes wandering amongst beech and birch trees...
A typical scene around here this week!
The weather forecast said Friday would be another damp, dull, grey day (though less foggy) so I was very surprised to see blue sky, colour and sunshine. It lasted all day and was a crisp, beautiful winters day.
It was back to the grey and misty on Saturday, and very cold too, for my monthly day volunteering at Forest School with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. We learned about predators, prey and a little about tracking too. We played a game called Prey & Predators, in which we divided into two teams, one laying a trail and hiding and one tracking and finding, which was good fun. At the start of each session we also did a little woodland mapping. Each family group collected two sticks and we put them together to form a 'cartwheel' then each group walked away from their section of the wheel, stopping every 8 paces to collect something to bring back to the wheel to represent that area. Each team collected 5 or 6 items then we returned and laid them out, in order of finding, from the centre of wheel.
The middle of the wheel represents our group circle and the map is very rough depiction of our woodland area so we could see which direction to walk in if we needed to find grass, or ferns, or blackberries (at the right time of year) and so on. This led to a discussion about habitats and from there we moved on to the prey and predators activities.
We had a lot of new families joining us today which was good - hopefully we'll see many of them again at future Forest School sessions.
I wish we'd had forest school when I was younger as the activities always sound so interesting. Loved all the misty photos. x
ReplyDeleteThe forest school always looks like a lot of fun!
ReplyDeleteLove that shot of the sparrowhawk, and the forest school photos always look like loads of fun too! I really liked all of the eerie, misty shots here too, so pretty! - Tasha
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