6 Week programme for forest school

Making Games

Main Learning outcomes  :-

Children to make games from natural resources to share and play with others. Each week they will learn different skills needed for the games.

Learning outcomes:-

• I am learning to work collaboratively to produce a final product.
• I am learning to whittle a stick.
• I am learning to be more aware of my environment and how it can be useful.
• I am learning the different parts of the flower and properties of leaves.
• I am learning about releasing natural dyes from plants.
• I am learning what is needed to light a fire.
• I am learning to make charcoal.
• I am learning to make a pencil and paint brush

Week 1:-

• Introduce children to 3 games,  Pick up stick, colour dominos and Uno.
• Discus how to make the games using natural resources in the forest area.
• Collect sticks and split into 2 groups, ask the children to make rules for their games. Whittle sticks.

Week 2;-

Look at how many colours are needed to finish the game and paint sticks.

Make a natural paint pallet from collected items.

Talk about vegetable dyes and plant dyes

 

Week 3:-

• Happa Kappa Dyes.Hammering plants. Cherokee women used this method to decorate fabric for clothes.
• Exploding flowers dissect a flower into its different parts and name each part.

Week 4:-

• Make Charcoal for pencils by using whittling skills learnt in week 1.
• Light a fire

Week 5:-

• Finish making pencils with charcoal from previous week.
• Show children how to make a paint brush from natural materials.
• Finish any over run activities.
• Ask children to come up with ideas for their own games

Week 6:-

• Light a fire and have hot chocolate and popcorn.
• Play the games with a group of reception children to test rules and suitability .
• Discuss what could have been done differently to improve or add to the end result.

Outdoor Learning Week Yr6

3D structures, Angles, Transient Art and lots of great conversation, whilst making Hot Chocolate and Smores (toasted marshmallows between biscuits)

Puppets in the forest

Sawing, drilling wholes, collecting, threading, being creative, sharing resources  and above all working together to create these wonderful woodland characters.

Maths with Twigs

Finding sticks to make simple numbers

Create the numbers from 1-9 with sticks.

Is it possible to make number 1 with just 1 stick, number 2 with 2 sticks, number 3 with 3 sticks.

learning about acute and obtuse angles, mark each number with the angles used, red for acute, green for obtuse and blue for right angles.

Journey Sticks

In many countries people have developed the idea of creating a journey stick to help them tell the story of their journey to others. It involves tying objects and colours to a stick that represent different experiences, feelings or parts of the journey.

You will need to bring pieces of different coloured wool or thread with you on your walk.

As you walk look for a short stick.

Then choose pieces of wool to show places, feelings and to attach objects to create your own journey stick.

What colour is the sound of a robin singing?

Twig Towers

Environmental artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Chris Drury use natural woodland materials to build and create 3D art and sculpture in the woods.

Why not build your own twig tower sculpture under a tree…?

Gather some twigs, ready to create your twig tower. It could have a square base, a triangular base or be of your own design.

The best place to build the tower would be beneath a tree as you can try to build the tower up to the lower branches.

If there’s a very low branch then you could build around it so that the branch becomes part of your sculpture.

You could also use a tree trunk as support.

Waiting to meet you

There is a special tree in every woodland just waiting to meet you!

Find a thin stick and some wet mud. Use the stick to trace with mud the 2, 3 or 4 main lines on your palm (alternatively use a pen to mark these lines clearly).

Look carefully at this pattern, for the special tree you need to find will have this pattern too.

Look for it in the big branches, in the tiny twigs or in the bark. Some of you may have further to explore than others but your tree will be there, waiting.