Wow! What an amazing forest school week we have had. Before we left nursery, the children thought about what they would like to do that day. They decided they wanted to spot a robin, a squirrel and a deer. Now that would be tricky as it has been a few weeks since we have spotted any deer on our site but we were all up for the challenge. We began the walk into forest school and were immediately greeted by beautiful birdsong. We looked up and there to our amazement was our friend, Steve the robin. He looked so happy to see us as he chirped his little song. Just at that moment, Brittany shouted “Look, a squirrel!’. She was right. There in the tree behind Steve was a squirrel happily jumping from tree to tree and running along the branches. We were all amazed and laughed at the fact we had seen two of the animals we wanted to spot within two minutes of arriving. We headed into our site and to our astonishment spotted a huge rabbit running through the grass. We didn’t think the day could get any better but we were wrong! We placed our bags and bottles down and started to prepare the area ready for our day. We glanced at our pond and there were our friends the mallards. They have returned again this year. We are all hoping to spot some ducklings very soon.
The children were thrilled at the amount of animals they had spotted and just as we were about to get busy with our day, we noticed something white in the distance. It was moving! We waited patiently, hoping to spot another woodland creature. The children (and adults) were all so quiet and the out of the dense grass, a huge and beautiful deer jumped out and raced up the hill. This is the first time for quite a while that everyone saw the deer. We could not believe our eyes! We had spotted everything and more from our list. There was only one more thing the children had wanted to spot but the adults weren’t too keen. The tiger from last week!
We decided to head off and see what else we could find. Last week we had come across what appeared to be a dam and the children thought we may have either beavers or otters on our site. We headed down to the stream to investigate. We discovered the area was rather boggy and swampy but with our motto of ‘teamwork makes the dream work’, we worked together supporting one another to cross the water and get through the smelly, squelchy bog. We discovered another area where there was a dam structure but no other signs of otters and beavers. We will follow up on our animal investigation next time we are at forest school.
