Guest post by our forest school practitioner Jo Dainty
On the walk up Joey collected a posey of flowers which was so lovely. There was lots of chatter and excitement. Alfie set the pace and it was a bit of a route march to keep up with him!
We started by introducing Molly’s sister (author of the nature story that has been shared with the class) to the group and enjoyed lots of chat about the characters! We had the circle of mats again – really lovely for everyone to feel like an equal part of the group.
To begin, we asked the children to choose a plant from a bucket of plants that had been picked already. We stroked them, inspecting them in a sensory way and stroked them on our faces, sniffed them.
The children helped me to give out the books and pencils and I set them to sketching their plant. A few of them said ‘are we sketching the flowers?’ With real excitement and there was total silence from the group for a while as they sketched their plants. There was real attention to detail. I spoke about looking where the leaves and buds grew, if they were opposite on the stem or if they were alternate. Bird song accompanied the creative moment.
After a while, some of the children had finished, so I took them to the table where they added colour using water colour paints or pencil crayons. There was so much creativity! Some children made up their own plant and added backgrounds.
The next challenge was to go off and find their plant. They did a great job on this, there was a lot of searching and running around the field.
After a brief break, I introduced happa zome/ flower pressing/ flower bashing onto white cotton fabric using hammers and mallets. The children did a lovely job of creating their prints, spending a long time on this. Molly had a large sheet of fabric and worked with a few children at a time to create a big piece of art together. A mandala-style creation. She did a great job of co-ordinating that! Multiple hammers going at once is quite noisy!!
A few children made tea, a few helped me to collect firewood. Some went with Molly to get clay from the ditch. At the end, we wrote some words down in our books about how we were feeling today outside, lots of lovely words like adventurous and peaceful, my favourite was “I’m looking forward to mathematics!” That did make me laugh from Jamal.
We lit the fire, toasted marshmallows and Molly taught us a chant! A lovely morning!
Oriel Gallery
Reflections
- Choose 30 max images for gallery!
