With the morning group (22 boys-only reception class) we had a treasure hunt.  The children were excited when they found the coins hiding under crosses and on trees.  Then they developed stories around the treasure hunt pretending to be pirates, their ship drowning as a shark attacked them – connection to children’s creative thinking – ‘what is this?’ ‘what can I do with this?’ -> possibility thinking.  The theme carried on in the afternoon with the group of homeschooled children and all of them were able to find the coins.  We did some cooking using some mud, water and tools to mix the different ingredients together.

I had a discussion about praise with Tom.  His viewpoint is that when a child achieves something or completes an activity or task whilst at the forest school, he prefers to talk about the actual process of the activity and how the child achieved his or her goal.  For example, if the child was able to climb up on the tree for the first time, he would tell the child that ‘it must have been difficult for you at times to pull yourself higher on the tree but you did it and you climbed the tree’.  Instead of saying to the child ‘well done’ or ‘that’s amazing’ or ‘good boy/girl’.  He would also say to the child that ‘you must feel proud of yourself for not giving up’ which I think is a good way of putting to the child so that they can be proud of their achievements and that the motivation to do this came from within – intrinsic motivation.  Tom mentioned that his colleague has a different approach to praising and that she would tell the child that he or she is amazing.

As it was a rainy day we put up a tarp, some of the children listened to the sound of raindrops and observed the movement of the rain on top of it.  In the morning session, we had a small group of children attending (ages 3-5) with their nannies and parents, some of them homeschooled and some attending nursery.  During the morning session, Tom read a book to the children about parakeets and other animals that can live in the forest, most of the children were happy to participate in the reading activity and enjoyed looking at the miniature animals Tom brought along to look at the different animals, such as a deer and wild hog.  We then did some games such as hide and seek.  During the afternoon session children of a mixed age group from 3 to 7 years attended.  We built a hideaway with long logs and covered it with leaves to shelter us from the rain.

I played with a 7-year-old boy, we dug a trap for a toadlet, used small bendy sticks to cover the trap and hid it with leaves -> imagination -> using first-hand experiences -> natural materials available in the woods/forest.