With the start of the spring term, year 5 began attending forest school.  The first session revolved around problem-solving and shelter building.  After a brief introduction of the rules and what to expect over the next 5 weeks, the children's warm-up activity was a game of Secret Pine Cone, where the children on one team needed to stop the children on the other team from getting their pine cone to the other side of the play area.

Once everyone was warmed up and were ready to start, the children were given a problem-solving exercise of trying to make the biggest tower they could out of some pre-cut sticks and thin rope.  A  number of the children tried to dig their sticks into the ground but found that this wasn’t an effective solution.  There were some creative designs with the tallest tower measuring 64cm.  With cold hands, this was no mean feat.  

During the second part of the session, the children were then given the task of erecting a shelter using only a long piece of rope and a tarpaulin.  Before getting to work, the group discussed the purpose of a shelter.  There were no further instruction, and it was up to the groups to decide how best to use the limited resources they had.  There were some great successful attempts with ideas changing after some serious trial and error!

Awesome start, year 5!