KS1 – Winter Is Here – Forest School

It was a very cold, wintry day for our Forest School sessions so not embrace it and use it as a learning opportunity! To begin with, children learnt how squirrels and some birds, including Jays, Magpies and Woodpeckers, cache nuts for when there is a lack of food available to them. All the children were then given a pinecone to go and hide for retrieval at the end of the session. Next, pupils played a game to stay warm. Children became animals and made a circle with a child (a squirrel) in the middle who was guarding precious winter food. The other animals had to sneak up and steal the food without being caught! Next, we turned our attention to ice. We looked at a disc of ice which had frozen over the night before and wondered if we could make some ourselves using loose parts to decorate them. On the playground, children organised themselves into teams and set about creating the most interesting ice disc they could using anything they could find. They left their creations outside their classrooms to hopefully freeze overnight and they were all very excited to see what they find tomorrow morning! Finally, we returned to the field to collect our hidden food stores from the beginning of the lesson! It was easy to see how squirrels and birds sometimes forget where they have put food and how new trees sprout up from lost acorns!