Year 3 welcomed their parents and grandparents to Littleheath Woods this week for a ‘Parent and Son Forest School’. The sun shone and we had a brilliant time. As a parent commented ‘I had a wonderful time at the woods today, breathing in the fresh air and bonding with my son through nature’.
We started with making up our own rules to keep us safe and happy during the session (this helped with some rather overexcited dogs) and then played our favorite hide and seek game, ‘Eagle Eyes’. We connected with nature around us through mindful breathing using our senses and then discussed ‘are humans part of nature?’. We explored the different cycles of nature and how they depend on each other…. the sun, the seasons, human, animal and plant life cycles. Thank you to the parents and Mrs West for their excellent acting out of the stages of the life cycles which encouraged everyone to join in!
All the grown-ups (supported by the children) interpreted their own life cycles using natural materials. One group made a fantastic leaf life cycle which they then extended to represent the human lifecycle from birth to death. The famous scientist, Albert Einstein would have approved; he said, ‘Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better’.
After this amazing creativity we all came together to ‘make a plan’ of our own ideas for the remainder of the session. One mum became head chef and made some delicious flapjacks and bread (Year 4 ate this later!). A dad was sawing disks which the boys made into an excellent frisbee game. We also dug rivers, relaxed in our hammocks, whittled sticks, and started small fires using flint and steels.
We lost track of time in the magical world that is ‘Forest School’ and almost forgot to eat our packed lunches (courtesy of our school chef, Des). We then came together for some reflections on the morning and finished off with our Forest School song.
Thank you nature, parents, boys and staff for a memorable morning.
