Woodland Adventures
It’s been a long time since I have managed to run any sessions, like everyone else the pandemic had stopped many of my plans. So when I put out a plea for a place to run Forest School on my local online community pages I was delighted to be approached by our local Reverend and the Management Team of a local woodland, which is managed for the community in Woodford Halse and the surrounding villages.
As a starter I decided to organise some woodland adventure sessions. These aren’t strictly “Forest School” as they are more of a one off experience of the type of fun and connections you can make in a woodland, but they did operate under many of the Forest School principles.
Having secured permission to use the sites I went through a nervous time of planning and risk assessing and preparing resources - this is all the behind the scenes stuff that needs to happen for a successful session to go ahead. I have to admit that I was incredibly nervous and I spent the few days before the first session a bit of a ball of anxiety, thank goodness for my wonderful husband, family and friends who were as supportive as ever!
Their faith in me paid off with a really wonderful initial day of two sessions, we had pretty good weather and a couple of showers in the morning didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits. We walked to the woods from our meeting point in the wonderful St Mary’s church and played Pooh Sticks on the bridge over the stream, spotted crayfish and lots of snails en route. Our final destination was a clearing by the stream, with a beautiful old beech tree and plenty of wildlife. A gnarly oak tree had dropped plenty of acorns, and lots of saplings can be seen rising up through the scrubby grassland. This grassland supports myriad creatures, grasshoppers, snails, shield bugs and frogs were the most abundant. Young birch trees supported some considerate shelter building, and the hedge woundwort made a great smelly addition to some magic potions.
After the nerves of my initial sessions I was joined the following week by my son and nephew as willing helpers and participants, the joy of a local session meant lots of friends were there to keep an eye on them, but as both of them are well seasoned woodland experts, they were quite happy to support some of the other children. The children particularly loved the opportunity to catch (and then carefully release!) plenty of grasshoppers in the longer grass in the wonderfully managed grounds of the church, the considerate mix of tidier areas alongside patches of land left fallow means that it is a haven for wildlife.
I’m looking forward to running more sessions in the October half term, as well as a regular Forest School starting in October, and have lots of plans in place for ways to share the magic of Forest School and the joy of the outdoors with you over the next few months.