Crookhill Primary School

This week Reception took their weekly trip to the Forest School. It was a very cold day so we had to wrap up very warm.

To help keep us warm we built dens making sure there were no gaps.

We lit the fire to cook some warm food and boil some water to make a delicious hot chocolate. We have some super helpers in Reception.

The hotdogs and hot chocolate were just what we needed to end a frosty day at Crookhill Forest School.

The focus of todays session was learning how to make a map of our surroundings by identifying different landmarks on our site.

We began the session by finding our own special place.

Some of us chose well hidden places that were great for climbing and others chose a much more quiet and peaceful place.

We talked about how we could keep our special place special and decided that keeping it free from litter and rubbish was a good idea. We all took part in a big litter sweep and were given certificates for all of our hard work. We sorted our rubbish into different piles for recycling and weighed how much of each type of rubbish we had. We learned about how long it takes for different types of rubbish to decompose. Did you know that it takes over 1 million years for a plastic bottle to decompose?

This afternoon we got busy mapping out our school grounds. We learned how to make sure objects were positioned correctly on our maps and were well labelled. We located our special place and tried to use the maps to find each others. After we had mastered this we measured the distance in metres between different areas on our map. This was tricky but we got there in the end.

We are looking forward to next week where we will be identifying different trees on our site and a variety of bugs. Watch this space for pictures.

Today was the first day of our TOLC project. Year 2 as well as being Nature Detectives are also going to be conserving our 'wild place'.

Joe and Simon have built us an amazing outdoor classroom so we can be outside whatever the weather.

We began today enhancing our team building skills. It was tricky but with lots of practice we managed to complete all the activities.

Getting ourselves into height order without speaking was tricky but with a little help we got there in the end.

Simon thought we looked like an artistic bunch so thought we would be up to the challenge of making our own natural art. Some of us made mud paintings which were messy but fun. We could even use natural materials such as grass or flowers to add colour to our pictures. Some of us made collages but were tricky to get back to the classroom.

This afternoon we took photographs of our art and pictures of things we thought made our wild place wild. Michael from the CLC showed us how to put our pictures into a Photostory. He has promised he will upload our finished work to the site soon so keep checking the website.

We can't wait to find out what we can do next week. Remember you need old clothes, wellies, waterproofs and a water bottle on Monday.

The rain didn't put Year 6 off visiting the Forest School tonight. They got straight to cooking, exploring and constructing. Tonight we toasted apples and dipped them in sugar (for energy).

We used the tarpaulin we put up last week (in all that rain) to protect us tonight when the rain was particularly heavy.

Reception class made their weekly trek to the campsite this afternoon. We collected lots of natural materials on the way down to the site to use in an environmental art picture.

Some of us made pictures using the things we found.

Can you guess what this picture is???

Some of us found dinosaurs in the woods and decided to build a dinosaur world.

The rest of us cooked popcorn for the rest of the class. It was poptastic.

Today, Reception class have been out on the field trying to build an array of traps to try to catch the beast of Crookhill. We pulled in some extra manpower by inviting our paretns who I have to say are VERY competitive.

We split off into groups to try to build our traps. Take a look at the trememdous efforts put in by the children and their parents.

Our winning trap was made by Sophia and her family. It was ingeniously made using only sticks and long grasses to tie them together.

We would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to all the parents who came to join us. We would appreciate you leaving your comments about the afternoon below.

There will be a photo album appearing on the gallery soon where you can see pictures of all the parents hard at work. I'm sure you'll all like to see them!

When Reception class got to school today, they found a beautifully wrapped parcel with a note from Percy the Park Keeper. He needed our help and who better than Reception? Percy had been out collecting slugs and snails for his nocturnal woodland friends but couldn't remember which one of his friends would like to eat them.

Our task this morning was to research which nocturnal animals ate slugs and snails. We looked in books, asked people in school and used the internet. We found that badgers, moles, owls and many more all eat these delicious slimy friends.

This afternoon some of us went down to the field to search for the moles in the mole holes. We didn't find any moles but we did find lots of juicy fat worms.

We dug up the mole holes to see what else we could find.

We put the snails and slugs by the large rocks in the corner of our field. We think the moles and badgers will find them there.

The children who were left in the class made us some delicious hedgehog rock buns for us getting back.

They were delicious when they were cooked.  

Today Reception have been working on their outdoor culinary skills. On today's menu we had hotdogs with or without ketchup!!!

While we were waiting for the very large pot of water to heat up we decided to decorate our campsite. We collected lots of interesting objects from the woodland areas and tied them with string to make a natural door way into the woodland.

Look closely and you can see feathers, holly, leaves, funny shaped sticks and many more things. Ask your children what they found.

When we were tired of exploring we relaxed with our hotdogs. They were delicious.

The children had a great time in the forest school today. We collected sticks to build our den and for the fire. The children enjoyed cooking the marshmallows on the fire but don't worry Mams I never left them while cooking on the fire! If you would like to see more photo's see gallery!

This afternoon. Reception and Year 1 took a visit to the campsite. Today we were toasting marshmallows.

We had to be careful to sit far enough away from the fire to keep safe but close enough to toast the marshmallow. The hardest bit was trying to get it inside the chocolate biscuits when they were toasted.

Delicious but a little tricky to eat!

Have a look in the gallery for more photos.

Reception class have decided that cooking indoors is fun but it could be more fun if we cooked outside on our campfire.

We started off simple and made nan breads. We had to roll the mixture into a ball and then we flattened it in our hands.

We were very careful putting them onto the hot tray. We learned lots about keeping safe and how to handle the hot cooking equipment. They tasted delicious when they were cooked.  

Friday saw the pupils taking over the school. The children took the registers in thier classes, led the house point assembly, blew the whistle at playtime and many other jobs. The teachers had a lovely relaxing day.

Reception class spent the afternoon teaching class 4 all about Forest Schools. They taught them all the safety rules we need to follow and taught them how to build the fence around the campsite.

Reception showed class 4 how to carry the materials properly.

We hope Class 4 are looking forward to getting back out to the campsite soon.

Today Reception class were in for a surprise. When they got to the campsite they found little pieces of a letter scattered around the campsite. We searched high and low until we found all of the pieces. The letter was from Florence the Chief fairy of Crookhill woods. She needed our help to build some new homes since a big giant had blown them all down.

We went straight into the woods to start building. Take a look at some of our houses.

Some of our houses had 2 storeys!

This afternoon, after we had decorated our biscuits, we had a visit to our Forest School site.

We each had a special bag, just big enough to collect some tiny natural materials.

We found conkers and their shells, berries, small sticks, acorns, feathers, different types of grasses and leaves and lots more interesting things.

We have brought everything back to our outdoor area to add to the materials we collected yesterday. We are looking forward to exploring and sorting them all tomorrow.  

Today Reception had a visit from Richard Wood and Audrey. We all went down to the field to check on the campsite the children helped to make when they were in Nursery. The strong winds meant that there had been some damage to the fence so we had to fix it. We collected lots of branches from our school field.

Some of the children thought that the wind would have blown all the fairy houses away, so some of us built some new ones.

This afternoon we found some digger tracks on the swampy hill. Richard got lots of buckets of water and we poured water down the tracks to see what would happen. When the water got stuck we used sticks to make a new channel.

Water + soil + Reception children =

A welly boot getting stuck in the mud! Can you see the boot?

We had a fantastic day despite the rainy windy weather. We can't wait to get back out there next week.

As part of the forest school training Miss Brown and Mrs Murray have had to prepare and cook a meal on the campfire for the staff of Crookhill. The requirements were, we could cook what we liked but there had to be 3 courses involved.

Our menu...

Starter

Chappati and dips

Main

Vege kebabs and toasties

Dessert

Bananas stuffed with sugar and chocolate

and

Toasted marshmallow sandwiches.

We also had to train the staff how to use a Bow saw and a bill hook. Mrs Bainbridge was very adventurous and used her new skills to make a mallet.

Take a look in the gallery at the rest of our snaps.  

On Thursday Reception made our weekly visit to the campsite. There was a little surprise waiting for us when we got there. The benches in the campsite were covered in little coloured pieces of string. We found out that the coloured string was little pieces of fairies breath. Ashton said the fairies had come to the campsite to get warm by the fire. Caitlin suggested that we go and have a look for the tree where the fairies lived. We wandered across the field until we found the tree. It was covered in fairy breath.

We collected 2 pieces of fairy breath each and helped each other to make a bracelet.

As part of our Forest School project Reception class have yet again visited our campsite.

We made our way around the field collecting lots of different natural materials. However, when you are using your hands to collect things, they get full pretty quickly. So to help us on our journey we made crowns and attached double sided sticky tape.

This meant that whenever we found anything that was interesting on our journey we could just stick it to our crowns and continue hunting.

Can't you tell we are pleased with our crowns.

We found lots of interesting things such as feathers, daisies, leaves, grasses, tiny pine cones and many more treats. Liam in year 6 was a really big help and helped us stick the materials on our crowns when we were unsure where we had a space.

Doesn't his crown look good?

Today Blagdon came to Crookhill. All the resources we collected yesterday have been brought to our forest school ready for us to start building our very own campsite.

We started by transporting all the natural materials from the Land Rover on the yard to the far end of our field which is our new forest school site.

Once we had moved all the resources we started collecting resources from our own field. This was a really important job as we needed lots of sticks to make the fence for our campfire.

The next part of our building plan was to mark out the area we needed for our campsite. Richard found the centre and we used string to measure out a 3m circle where our fence would be. We made a human campfire to see how big it would be.

Some of us were the fince, some of us were the benches and some of us pretended to be the fire in the centre.

It was really tricky putting pegs into the ground to mark out the area we needed. We used mallets to help us get them securely into the ground.

The next job wsa to put the fence posts into the ground where the markers were so we could start to construct our fence.

We used the sticks we collected to make the fince being careful to measure the sticks against the fence posts. We had to use sticks that were just the right length so they would stay in place. It was a very tricky job.

Now our fence in made we had to make some seats to put inside it. This involved some very careful rolling of logs. We worked together and helped each other get the logs to the campfire area.

Our benches wouldn't be complete without feet though so we all helped to tie them together.

The final part of building our campfire was actually making the campfire. The stones we used were very heavy but we managed to roll them into the centre of the campfire.

When it was all finished we sat and relaxed around the lit fire. It was very relaxing and after a hard 2 days work we all needed the rest.

For some of us it had been a very long 2 days and our "batteries have ran out."

We are all really looking forward to having lots of fun around our campfire.

Today Reception class have visited Blagdon as part of our Forest Schools project. We have been chosen to be part of the scheme where we will be able to develop our ouw Forest School site. Today was all about taking part in a range of activities that raise their awareness of woodland animals, plants and trees but mostly having fun in a natural environment.

We started off our day by walking into the woods and talking about all the things that could harm us. We came up with some great suggestions from bee stings to brambles and nettles.

Once we knew how to keep safe in the woods we went to visit the campfire. Richard and Audrey showed us how to walk properly around the campfire to keep us safe at al times. The campfire was our favourite part of the visit.

We even got to taost marshmallows and make sandwiches with digestive biscuits.

Our marshmallow sandwiches were delicious!!!

We spent the morning investigating the woodland area and even bumped into a good witch. She asked us to help her make some magic potions for the animals of the forest.

We made our potions in little goblets using materials from the forest floor. We made potions for badgers, foxes, birds, owls and other woodland creatures. We think they are going to love them.

We ate our lunch out by the campfire making sure we took all our rubbish away with us.

After lunch we had fun experimenting with den building. Willow made a fantastic den all by herself.

We have had a fantastic day in the woods. Tomorrow Richard and Audrey are coming to visit us so we can set up our own forest school site.

Check the website tomorrow for pictures of our site!