We started our day by walking down the lane towards our forest school site. Freddie spotted a construction vehicle and immediately identified it as a telescopic handler. A builder spotted us looking at the vehicle and explained it’s job and confirmed it was in fact a telescopic handler (and also a forklift truck)!
We continued on our route and listened to the sound of bird song as we made our way into the forest. We spotted lots of signs of life from blossom on the trees to bluebells and some animals trails. The first trail we found was a parting in the grass and a large hole into the bushes. We talked about what kind of animal may have made this trail. We finally decided it could have been a fox. We spotted another trail but this one was larger and more like a path. Rupert identified that the path had been created by a human! Yes, it was us!
We found the sneaky staircase and followed it all the way to the path. We were surprised by the changes in the woodland. We talked about why the forest had grown so much. We thought maybe the sun, soil, air, rain and time of year had something to do with it. We then had a decision to make as we approached a fork in the path. Do we go left, right or straight ahead? The children voted and straight ahead was the decision. We had never ventured along this path before. We soon realised this path was taking us higher and higher up into the hill. We navigated steep steps, stinging nettles and fallen branches to reach the peak. We looked down at the vast wilderness below and were amazed that all of the space was ours to explore. We climbed further up the hills until we found a familiar spot. It was our hill covered in beautiful bluebells and pink flowers. We spent lots of time here climbing, scaling the hill, building a fire (a pretend one of course!), bouncing on tree branches, discovering Superworm and identifying letters which had been carved onto a piece of wood. “Look, it’s a M for Mummy!”.
After lunch we ventured down the hill and into our original forest school site. We were amazed to find a den we had built many months prior had now been swallowed up by nettles and other plants. The children felt a little sad as we were now unable to play in our den. We needed to find a new spot to build the best den ever! We began searching and found a fantastic place to explore beside the river. Unfortunately we ran out of time and needed to head back to nursery but we are very excited for next week’s adventures.