Today is my final session for my placement. Reflecting on the past weeks, it has been so clear to me that such an important part of childhood is based on relationships and friendships.

In the different groups there are so many different aspects underlying why a child acts the way that they do. There are many reasons behind different behaviours, and how easily children can form friendships or associate with their peers.

Today it is the last session and it is raining. All the boys and the two girls are here today. One of the girls said to the other ” I am happy you are here”.

We are putting up a shelter and starting a campfire. Each of the children helped with the setting up of the shelter. We all huddled under the shelter for warmth. The boys went out to collect some dry wood to put in the fire. They all went off as a group.

The girls today were learning how to tie knots. One of the girls had forgotten how to tie one of the knots. So the other girl demonstrated how she would do it and the other girl copied, they were working together to expand their knowledge on the different knots. They would ask us if they needed help.

This time I tried to join in on the pokemon game. I had learnt a few of the moves. They invited me to join and I began to play. The play was simple and the invitation allowed me to be fully part of it. There was still the one boy on the outside, who didn’t quite understand the game and knowing he had been invited to play, just like I had.

These small interactions allowed me to understand, that an invitation was essential. It was simple communication that allowed me to join in, they were teaching me while the game was going on without me having to ask questions. I know now I could pick it up from next week.

I couldn’t help but think throughout all of the sessions, there were three siblings who seemed to all struggle. The youngest boy often excluded himself from groups, the middle would be with the younger boys but didn’t understand how to join play and the older girl would only interact with this other girl.

I met their parents at the end of each session. The dad was a very laid back individual and the mum was more on the serious side. My teacher had said they struggled to get a balance between the mum being strict and the dad being too laid back, a divide in parenting. This made me question how much your childhood and family life affects your friendships later on.

Its good to be back today in our original setting. Today one of the girls is sick, and a few of the boys are away, so today is a smaller group. One boy made a comment today saying “its nice … isn’t here, it is so much quieter”. The others in the group all agreed and laughed.

Despite saying this group didn’t have as much to talk about. One of the boys that wasn’t there was the group leader, without him the boys weren’t so easy to start any sort of play. Eventually they started to run around and play a reenactment of one of the playstation games. Again one of the boys removed himself from the group and hang around in the trees.

The youngest boy today stayed by my side all session. His brother hit him with his stick, and the boy who had been hit said “you are always so selfish and only think of yourself”. The boy that had been hit by the stick began to cry. The older boy just walked away shrugging his shoulders. He then tried to join the group of the younger boys but they had already commenced their Pokemon play. He then just sat himself down and excluded himself from everyones play.

The only girl today was much quieter than usual. She went to the Den by herself and began playing on her own. She did not interact with any other of the children until we gathered once again in the group and had fruit time.

In todays afternoon session all 4 of the boys were here. I was really excited for this session with them. Today we just made the fire and had tea and buscuits with all of them. One of the boys told me he was going to be taking his gases this year, he is one of the few in his school who is able to take these exams. All the other boys began shouting things at him, “you are not clever” or “boring”. The boy ignored these comments and continued to talk.

Today I was so amazed by this young boy. I am also continually challenged in the second session. I want to be encouraging and create the right environment for these children to feel safe and comfortable, to be able to create and explore their dreams and ideas.

Today we are going to a different forest,  all the way in dorking. There will be some children from the morning sessions and some children from different schools. I am quite looking forward to being in a new enviornment, where there are different areas to explore and different children expressing their creativity.

I just found out we are bow making, there are 7 children here today. Three girls and 4 boys. We all separated off to find our wood to collect for our bow and arrow. Two of the girls worked together, the boys worked together and then some worked individually. The two girls seemed very quiet together. But as they became more comfortable in the group they began chatting and giggling more. They were leaning on each other, running off to play, carving out different pieces of wood for their bow. They were taking selfies with their phone and showing them to the group. They made a few interactions with the boys, however the boys showed little interest in interacting with the girls and spent most of the time collecting firewood and forming their bow. Some of the boys didn’t know each other before. They seemed to instantly bond whilst making the bow and arrow, they were changing, laughing and asking each other questions.

This has all got me thinking about the differences between male and female friendships. It has got me thinking about the theories behind friendships and peer relationships. With the homeschoolers, making friends in forest school is important, because they have fewer interactions with children outside of it. Whereas for these girls who came today, they are at school and have just come for the experience, there was no need for them to build friendships. Those alongside them were their peers. Does a Forest School enviornment enable children to form friendships more easily? In creativity and freedom are children able to connect on a deeper level?

Today we are looking at skulls and different types of Fur. We were gathered around the fire place, admiring the different types of animals. All of the children seemed very intrigued as the bones were being passed around the circle. Each child got to have a look at the skulls and bones and together they were to come up with what bone related to which animal.  When choosing to discuss, the children discussed with their friends and then we talked about it as a group.

It was a good way to see the children interacting with each other as a whole group, fascinated with the bones. Everyone shared and everyone was included in the discussion.

The children went off to play. One of the girls came up to me and said that one of the boys had called her stupid, this girl had taken it personally and was upset by the comment. This is the first interaction I had seen between the boys and the girls. I then brought the boy and girl together and he apologised. We then set up a tight rope and the girl was the first to participate, whilst the boy who had called her stupid refused to do it because he was scared. You could see the girl was filled again with a sense of confidence and everyone laughed it off.

In the second session today we did the tight rope again with these children. There was a new teaching assistant today. The boys were focused on my interactions with the young teaching assistants. They made a few inappropriate comments. They also made comments about not liking the main teacher and saying they were bored. As soon as they got involved, they were laughing and joking around.

I thought in this session I would focus more on the dynamics and friendships of the older guys. There is a group of around 5 boys who when not participating in activities, stay together. Today the activities varied in accordance with who wanted to do what. One group would be cooking mushrooms on toast, another knot learning and another tree climbing. The girls decided to learn how to make knots with big rope, the younger boys decided to do tree climbing and the older guys stayed together to make mushrooms on toast. They all tend to joke with each other about another ones limitations. One of the boys doesn’t engage as much in the group. He tends to sit on the outside of the group and when a comment was made today, he got offended and decided to do his own thing. One of the boys commented on the way in which  he was cutting his mushrooms. This boy is one of the louder ones of the group and voices his opinions. The other boys just looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

In the second session we were continuing to make the mallets. The boys were carving out their mallets from a piece of wood. They were chatting whilst they were carving. This week they were talking about their interests and asking more questions. The activity seemed to have captured their attention. They were concentrated this session and seemed to be interacting well with each other. They were talking about marriage today and friendships. They were describing what they thought about the. In terms of marriage, most of them agreed that they didn’t believe love could last, they avoided the topic of friendships.

It is interesting leading two completely different sessions. The children who are home schoolers, they have one approach to relationships. The other children in the second session have a different approach and perspective on frienships/relationships. Most of the children who are home schooled come from whole families, i have interacted with the parents. The children from the second sessions have grown up around broken families.

I am feeling a lot more confident for this session and i am so intrigued by the different dynamics of friendships and relationships in the group.

Today half the group were staying at basecamp and the other group were going to the climbing tree. I went to the climbing tree with 4 of the younger boys. Two of the boys initiate a play called Pokemon. They begin to do different moves and have different ways of attacking and defending. One of the other boys clearly wants to join in with the play, he begins to ask questions about the different moves. However because the two other boys are already in the play, in order to answer the questions they have to come out of the play, and reenter the play. So they began to ignore the questions and carried on their play. This other boy then excluded himself from the play and sat on his own. The youngest of the group mainly tried interacting with me and by himself. The boys carried on the play until it was break time.

The second session of today was much more disruptive. The boys had had a busy day at their school and were in an active mood. One of the boys picked up the smaller boy and began to rub his head, he then put the boy down and they laughed a bit. The boys were talking about the mischief this boy had got up to in school today. Throughout the session he did not listen us or his teachers.  He had limited interaction with the other boys, however the other boys were distracted by him ( He seemed to be the one leading most of the play). The children ended up leaving early because they were being so disruptive, the teaching assistants felt it was better for them to leave.

Today was a different day, but I felt I was able to look at the different interactions and friendships in both the groups.

It is my second day of placement and today I am very much looking forward to the session. Today we are making Bacon Rolls on the campfire.

The girls immediately ran to a den they had been working on. The older boys were creating obstacle courses and the younger boys continued on from last week with their imaginative play. One of the younger boys stuck closely to Chris and I for the majority of the session. We were encouraging him to play with the other children, but instead he climbed trees on his own, or came to us. We then regathered as a group and one of the boys delegated tasks to the others to set up a campfire in order to cook the bacon. All the children interacted with each other and had role to play in a part of the process. I noticed the girls remain relatively quiet unless they are interacting with each other.

After the campfire I asked for the girls to show me their den. They brought me over to their den and they began to play their own game. They began pretending they were animals gathering food for their young and they used the den as a base camp. I observed their play, however as the game went on, I felt i was interrupting their, so  I went back to base camp. The first week I had not seen them play together, through play it seemed they were able to communicate through the game, which enabled more comfortable interactions afterwards.

In the second session there were only two boys this week. These two were the quieter of the boys. They asked how our week was and showed more of an interest this week, I felt more comfortable to be myself. One of the boys is relatively little for his age. According to the teaching assistants all he eats is chips. The other boy continued to comment of this boys size, joking around, giggling and making some inappropriate remarks to each other. We were just making tea and carving the start of a mallet. Both boys actively participated and continued to joke around with each other, however the teaching assistants were sat in between.

I really enjoy the second sessions. The boys who naturally find it difficult to stay still and listen are being given the opportunity to be creative and to do things with their hands as opposed to writing down all the time. They are given space to to be able to form friendships and good relationships with their peers and teaching assistants.

The two different classes have very different dynamics, I am so intrigued by the way in which two groups interact with each other so differently and am looking forward to looking deeper into the friendships being formed in these sessions.