Our last forest school session before Christmas had arrived. The children were very excited for fire week where we cook our meals on the open fire. The meal of choice was jacket potatoes, beans and cheese with our favourite dessert of pancakes, chocolate and strawberries (these really are simply delicious!).

We talked about how to stay safe around the fire and after a late start to our day we got to work immediately constructing our fire. We knew we needed kindling but what else would we need? Whilst lunch was cooking, Angela began to prepare our Kelly kettle for a very festive treat – hot chocolate and marshmallows! The children sat back in amazement as the fire burned out of the top of our Kelly kettle. We talked about the differences between smoke and steam and what we should do if the smoke moved towards our eyes.

After a warm drink our lunch was ready. It was very tasty and before we knew it our pancakes were ready too! We were so surprised at how quickly our fire had cooked everything and that meant we still had lots of time to explore our forest school. One child wanted to visit the horses who live in the meadow so we headed down the lane and across the field where we counted five horses. We then headed down a deep ravine into the woodland. There were lots of steps to walk down but the children were very aware of how to keep themselves safe. As we continued along the path, we encountered a problem. A huge tree had fallen across the path and we were unable to continue any further. Ruby suggested we climb over it. We discussed it and decided we would give it a try. We all negotiated a pathway around, under or over to move past the tree and everyone was amazed at their achievement! We continued and found more trees which had fallen but these were safe enough to climb on and try to balance. We also found a hollow tree which was great for hiding in. As the day ended the children sang Christmas songs all the way back to nursery. What a fun and festive forest school day!