Y2: Team Work!

This week we visited our second FS site at Church Field Copse. This is the first time Y2 have been there and was was great fun. The children all asked to help carry ropes and pull the trolley.. which was very tricky in the muddy field!

Before we left I did have to point out to the children that it is colder at the Copse as we don't have the lovely high wall shielding us. It was tough one to get them all to bring a jacket or jumper, and some pretended that they hadn't got a coat.... but when we got there they did all see the reason I had insisted!

When we got to the copse we all checked for hazards particularly deadwood hanging in the trees & rubbish. I brought some litter pickers with us just in case and these were a great hit.. everyone wanted to pick up litter! We found some sweet wrappers and broken glass which the children were not happy about, but we put it in the rubbish bag carefully. I have noticed how interested this group are in collecting litter at school over lunchtimes... maybe we have a little bunch of eco warriors in our midst :-)

One f the greatest joys today was hearing the amazement from he children at how many conkers there were... quickly they all filled their pockets, and then started onto trolley... I think they tensely wanted to collect them all.

Eloise and Issy set up a shop with flints and conkers, and Rose collected a huge pile of conkers. The shop games did spark a little bit of upset between some of the girls and the rules, but it was a really good lesson in communication and friendship - the length of Forest School allowed them time to have their disagreements and work through their problems, and impressed that it actually didnt take very long for them to be friends again.

Fergus was very interested in some sap that he found, and was teaching some fo the children what it all was.. amazing!

Logan and William had some great exercise with one of the big ropes - seeing how far they could lean back and still stand up, and also shake them like battle ropes!

Logan also really loved the den that him and Miss Thorpe made.

The trees at the copse offer more climbing opportunities and the children didn't miss a trick here. There were wonderful moments when I heard some children giving there instructions to others on how to get up (Theo was amazing with Tilly)... and Jakob was keen to get a rope into the tree so that he could get higher, and could get down super quickly.

Ed and Matthew had great fun playing conker cricket - they found a suitable bat, and used a tree as their stumps - it was hard to hit the conkers and be accurate but they seemed to really love the challenge and coordination tat it took.

At the end we played a great game of chicken or hero, but with Eloise's new Forest School name for it - Fox and Hare. All of us got involved - we had to make sure we removed all the big logs and remembered where the rabbit holes were so we didn't have accidents!

We all came back very tired but in one piece... another lovely afternoon!