At D’Eyncourt Primary School, we are really lucky to have our environmental area. It is an excellent and unique resource for the whole school to use.
The Reception class take part in “Forest Schools” activities in the environmental area on a weekly basis. It is situated across the field from the classroom, the children enjoy putting on their wellies and going to the “Secret Garden”.
They take part in activities such as shelter building and knot tying, mud painting, mud pie making, modelling with natural materials, role-play, tree climbing , hunting for minibeast and pond dipping, setting and following trails and other basic woodland skills.
These sorts of activities encourage the children to solve problems, manage risk, use all of their senses for learning, keep active, work as a team, learn to appreciate nature and the outdoors, boost their self-confidence and raise their self-esteem.
The children learn to use natural materials and develop practical and intellectual skills, which can all be linked with the Early Learning Goals and National Curriculum.
As much topic work as possible is taken into the garden, the Chinese New Year dragon they made even got a stroll through the trees!
The Forest School model is suited to people of all ages and has been found to be particularly successful with children and young people who may struggle to achieve in the more formal classroom setting.
We have had our environmental area now for a number of years. It now resembles a miniature woodland, complete with a wildlife pond.
It is a haven for wildlife and the children regularly see squirrels, frogs, birds and even newts. The children enjoy searching for minibeasts and watching the progress of tadpoles in the pond, as well as checking to see if there are any nests in our bird boxes.
It is specially rewarding when the Spring arrives and the children have the pleasure of seeing the
blossom buds on the trees, the crocuse, bluebells, daffodils and primroses.
We have tried to keep the area as natural as possible letting nature take its course as far as we can!
Unfortunately due to vandals the area occasionally needs maintenance and repair. On one occasion it was so badly damaged that parents of some of our children volunteered their time on a Saturday to make it safe and tidy for our children to enjoy once again. This was a really enjoyable day and showed a true sense of community and achievement!
Because of our helpers hard work the children have been busy once again with Forest School activities and curriculum work. Reception have been making seed cakes for the birds to eat, very messy but fun.
While Year 3/4 have been busy looking at the different wild life to be found within the area and their habitats. They found lots of frogs!
The environmental area becomes a magical place for Reception children to really get into role play and we find been away from the classroom on occasions sparks their imagination and helps them get into character.
Summer Forest School – We have had lots of fun since the weather has improved over our in environmental area. We have been mud painting and making bird feeders. Puss in Boots visited us to tell us his story. He also told us about the spell that turned the giant into other animals. We collected the boots from around Forest School and rearranged the letters to find ingredients for the magic spell, leaf, twigs, stone, mud. We mixed it together and we all turned into
different animals.
Teddy Bears Picnic – We stumbled across some bears having their annual picnic. They had travelled from all over the world. The special guests, pop stars “The Softies” had lost their instruments on the plane and so we made them some new ones from things we found around Forest School and joined the concert. They let us them them for juice and fruit as long as we pretended to be
teddy bears too!
We hosted a Forest School Workshop so parents could join their children in their Forest School activities. We were thrilled with the response, 32 children and their parents attended the workshop.
We made hot drinks using a Kelly kettle, which was quite hard to light at first, but once it got going, it made some lovely hot chocolate and there was enough for everyone.
We also made bird feeders using lard, muesli, currants and attached the mixture to trees and twigs. We used home-made playdough to make sculptures and pictures using natural materials found around the area. The parents and their children made a fabulous den to play in and the mud paintings were beautiful.
We also used wood, hammer and nails to make a couple of bird boxes to put up in our Forest School.
It was a very enjoyable morning and we would like to thank everyone who attended.
Several parents asked for the recipe for the 1 minute playdough
1cup of flour
½ cup of salt
1 tablespoon of oil
1 tablespoon of cream of tartar
add food colouring is desired
Mix together and then add 1 cup of boiling water from the kettle and stir until it makes one big lump of dough.
As part of our new FEI (Forest Education Initiative) Forest School project we have great plans for the environmental area. All the flora and fauna will be catalogued and a continued tidy-up project is planned.
We are looking at better ways of securing the site. We have applied to the woodland trust for more
trees and shrubs.
