Our forest school day began as we jumped onto our minibus. We didn’t have a plan for the day but the children are always amazing at creating one. They decided they wanted to go and look for crocodiles. But which part of our forest school site would lend itself well to crocodile spotting? One of the children pointed out that last time we visited forest school, they had spotted a huge pond and that was obviously the best place to spot a crocodile so off we set. We did spot quite a lot of life around the pond but sadly no crocodiles. Maybe it was a little too cold for them.

There were lots of signs of ‘new life’ and the children were excited to spot buds on trees, catkins (or caterpillars as the children referred to them) and little yellow flowers which some children thought may be either daffodils or sunflowers. We ventured further along the path and then suddenly we found something strange, something which intrigued us all. What could it be? It looked like a wooden door in the ground. One of the grown-ups wondered if it was a trap door. Some of the children attempted to open it but it was ‘too secure’ in their words. What could be hidden beneath the wooden door? There were lots of thoughts. Could it be an animal, a gruffalo or what about a troll! But someone quickly pointed out that trolls live under bridges so it definitely wasn’t a troll. This would be mystery for another day!

We found a track which led all the way to the main part of our forest school site. Clearly the preschoolers are excellent navigators. The path was quite muddy but we do enjoy exploring muddy patches. As we headed onto our forest school site we saw something truly amazing! There in front of us stood three deer (we have been waiting for many weeks to spot them). Then we had another amazing moment. At lunch time another group of deer passed us on the hill. These deer were a slightly different colour but after waiting patiently for four weeks, we had been rewarded with spotting lots of deer. We were all thrilled!