A short but jam-packed Forest School term with Year 5. The first challenge was to create rope ladders from scratch - children had to saw the logs into the right length, learn the Marlin Spike Hitch and complete the rope ladder in team work. The rest of the school was extremely impressed with the new additions to the Forest School area.
We played a tree identification game and tied in their learning about rivers in class and children looked up rivers in an atlas and created the construction with natural materials.
For our cooking week, we made a cake dough and fried it in a Hazel leaf over the fire. We try and cook a different dish each year in Forest School.
Some children chose to split logs, use fire strikers, make bows and arrows or make a mud cafe. I also had lots of helpers to replace the pirate ship, plant plants that had grown from seed and help fix items.
In our last week we made pencils from elderflower stems and charcoal willow that has been burned over the fire in a tin with a lid. Some of the children were lucky and got to meet Will and Penny, who are bee keepers and they brought in an observation hive into school. They told us all about honey bees and we even got to taste a little bit of their own honey. 20th of May is National Bee Day!
Enjoy your half term
Year 5 Term 5 2025-2026
