Outdoor Chronicles 5th March

Beach School –

It was the first session at the beach For the Badgers and set off straight away to look for T.T our Beach mascot. When we found her, it was decided that she needed to swim. We talked about the waves coming and out and dug a small trench and waited. It was really calming to watch the waves as we we waited and after some small waves, TT, got to swim again. Don’t worry, we rescued her again and brought her back to base where we talked about seaweed. In the book ‘Clam I am’ they talk about all the different colours of seaweed so we set out to find as many different colours as we could. We even brought the hand drill on request so after finding lots of driftwood, we made the time to practice our woodworking skills.

This carried on into the workshop where the children started to use the skills to make a big pretend birthday cake! It might need lots of holes if the adults use it so the children took on the task to keep drilling. ‘I’m going to be very busy!’ One of the children said and he was right!

Forest School

The Hedgehogs Forest School session took place in the woodland garden this week. We have been reading ‘Stone Soup’ and making our own soup. It’s all about teamwork and the children have been working as a team to find the ingredients. The carrots needed to be chopped first so the children needed to learn how to use the saw safely. The children have developed their critical thinking skills so quickly already and in the workshop, they are making their own decisions already as to what to what they want to make and which tools they need to make them.
We have been talking about ‘connecting’ things. This means using the hammer and nails which they have a lot of confidence in using. Well done Hedgehogs!

Kitchen Garden

The Foxes are the group going to the plot this term and they are having a very productive time getting ready for the growing season. They’ve been making signs for the beds and washing all the pots ready to put our seeds in. They’ve visited th e on site shop and talked to Fergus the resident black Labrador and bought a whole load of flower bulbs, seeds and root trainers ready to get moving as soon as we’ve said goodbye to the last frost. They learnt all about which way up a bulb goes (hair bottom pointy hat!) and planted our garlic and onion bulbs out in our big bed.

They measured the dept and spaces in between with a pole and our new bulb dibber. They found lots of time to splash around in the puddles made when we washed our pots, made some rather brilliant DIY climbing equipment with scaffold boards and an old bench and helped to tidy our gardening tool shed. They planted up some potatoes and gave everything in the poly tunnels a water. So much to do and so much to learn!