Year 6 (Shark class)

 Welcome to your Forest School activities page!

Here you will find details and photos of all our sessions in the Woodland and on the Animal Park. 

Please scroll down the page to see what we have been getting up to each week!

Shark Class started their Forest School sessions on Tuesday 14th and Friday 17th January.  Sessions will continue every week until we finish for Easter at the beginning of April.

You can have a look at the planning for our Forest School sessions by clicking on the "Planning and Risk Assessments" Tab.  Here you will also see the letter sent home to parents during the first week back after Christmas, which gives details of appropriate clothing and footwear, although I am sure most of you are familiar with this by now!

On Tuesday 7th January, Miss T gave a brief Health and Safety update in the Year 6 classroom, just to re-familiarise everyone with our expectations during our Forest School sessions this term.

Various members of staff from school will be accompanying Miss T each week, and Marg Kimber, a local resident, and a member of the Stonebroom HAF team, who is familiar to most of you, will join us in the woodland and on the Animal Park when she is able.  Sam, Miss T's son will also be joining us for some of our sessions to share his gardening knowledge too!

Session 10 - 25th March

Year 5 and 6 Forest School 

ALL DAY SESSION!

Oh it was lovely to have an all day Forest School session today!  We spent all morning on the Animal Park and in the woodland; came back to school for dinner, then went back into the woodland in the afternoon!  It was lovely to have some of Year 5 with us for the day too!

We split into two groups in the morning and half of us went on to the Animal Park to spend time with the animals and to help with some jobs; the other half of the group stayed in the woodland and make Pogs (piggy logs!) and Miss T was really impressed with the amount of work we put into making these look so good!  We listened to the instructions, helped set up the activity and we were super careful with the acrylic pens too.  When you see the photos, I'm sure you will all agree that our Pogs look absolutely fabulous!

After 45 minutes or so, we swapped groups so everyone had the chance to make a Pog and to spend time on the Animal Park.  We had a look at our two chicks, they are so fluffy and very tame, they just sat on our hands and were quite happy to be passed around so we could all have a cuddle.  We have unfortunately lost a couple of chicks, but there are a few more hatching and  Miss T told us that any chicks that do manage to hatch only have about a 50% survival rate in the first two weeks.  Several of the Mamma hens are now broody (sitting and incubating eggs on the nest), so hopefully we should have quite a few more chicks over the next few weeks.

We helped out with lots of jobs on the Animal Park and spent time with the animals too.  Year 5 remembered so much from when they last visited in Year 4!

In the afternoon, we went straight into the woodland and had a look at our woodland maps.  We talked about grounding our maps, and most of us remembered how to do that, which was really impressive, and we picked out some landmarks and found some things on the map that are no longer in the woodland.  We found the 10 orange triangles that are marked on the map and then we split into two groups.  One group went and hid four log cookies on the North East side of the woodland and the other group went and hid four log cookies on the South West side of the woodland.  We needed to make sure that we hid the log cookies as close to their corresponding number as possible, so when we swapped groups to go and find the cookies, they wouldn't be too well hidden to find!  When we found all the log cookies we came back to the log circle and chose a different cookie from the box.  These are our miming  action log cookies and we mimed the action for the rest of the group to guess.  We had a lot of fun with this, and when everyone had had a go, we asked if we could make up our own for the rest of the group to guess, and some of these were absolutely brilliant, all Forest School related, and very well mimed!  There are some talented actors amongst us!

What a super day, Year 5 and 6, thank you, you all entered into the spirit of the day and we had a lot of fun!

There are some really super photos below for you to have a look at, some of them taken by Mrs Sweeney's daughter, Lola, who has a really good eye for photographic perspective and unusual angle photography.

Fabulous!

Session 9 - 21st March

Our River Walk! - Group 2

It was another lovely day for our river walk with Group 2, and after we'd completed essential jobs on the Animal Park, we went and had a look in the pond and we saw three frogs.  Some of our Year 6's managed to get some really good photos.  There's no more frogspawn yet, but at least the frogs are back... they must have been waiting for the weather to warm up a bit!

We went to the bridge and had a safety talk about walking down the river.  We needed to remember that there are a lot of the rocks and stones on the river bed, some of them are quite big and we can't see them when the water gets cloudy.  It's also important to remember that not everyone wants to be splashed or to get too wet, so we made it clear that everyone should only do what they're comfortable to do.  The whole group were wonderfully understanding and so sensible and it wasn't long before everyone was getting very wet wading through the deepest parts of the river.  Miss T and Mr James were so impressed with how everyone helped anyone who was a bit unsure.  It was lovely to see the way you all worked together to move some of the big rocks from the river bed at the bottom of the mud slide, and how one or two members of the group found a better way to climb up the mud slide by going up a less slippery bit!  There was some really good humour too and some brilliant cheering on and offers of help.  The mud slide got really slippery the more you all went down it and everyone had a lot of fun!

It was a bit cold when we all got out of the river to come back to school, but we'd taken off our coats before we went in so we could put a warm, dry layer on to walk back to school in.  Some of you even brought towels and dry socks! Brilliant!... and someone walked back over the playground in bare feet... given away by a set of wet footprints all the way back to the blue doors!  :)

Thank you to the whole class this week for being such good sports, showing excellent resilience and some fantastic collaborative work. 

Well done, all of you!

Have a look at Group 2's photos below.

Session 9 - 18th March

Our River Walk! - Group 1

We had beautiful weather for our first river walk of the week today but we spent a bit of time on the Animal Park first, to make sure all the animals had fresh water, fresh hay and lots of treats out of the fruit bucket.  Miss T also introduced us to our first little chick of the year, that hatched under the mamma hen over the weekend.  Group 2 had heard this little chick peeping inside the egg on Friday while we were candling fertile eggs.  We'll not be able to tell if the chick is a hen or a cockerel until about 5 weeks old, when the comb on top of the head will be more pronounced on a cockerel and less visible on a hen.

We walked past the pond to see if there was any more frogspawn, but there is still only one clump.  The eggs were a lot bigger this week, so that could be a sign that the frogspawn is getting ready to hatch into tadpoles.  We know that it is really important to leave the frogspawn and the tadpoles alone, so that they have every chance of surviving and turning into frogs.  There is a lot less frogspawn in the pond this year, so please do not be tempted to take any home, please leave it in the pond.

We went down to the bridge and had a safety talk with Miss T before we went into the river.  It's important that we stay safe and look after each other in the water.  We put work gloves on so we could safely remove branches and rocks from the river as we walked down.  We went as far as the rope swing, then came back and made mud slides down the bank into the river.  We worked out that if we poured the water out of our wellies down the mud slide, it became more slippery and easier to slide down!  Everyone was super careful and considerate and there was lots of good communication to help each other stay safe.  Miss T, Mr James and Marg were all very impressed with the resilience of the whole group with this activity.  The water was very cold, and feet got very wet and cold, but everyone accessed the activity at a level they were happy with, some just paddled in the river, some had so many goes on the mud slide, we lost count, and some just tried it closer to the water, rather than right from the top.  Well done, Group 1, every single one of you impressed the adults this week.

Have a look at your photos below.

Group 2, you will be doing this on Friday, some come prepared!

Session 7 - 4th and 7th March

Preparing our Wildflower Meadow.

We didn't spend long on the Animal Park this week, but we did dig out the muck heap into bags, buckets and barrows to take down to the meadow.  It was heavy work, but most of us worked really hard to dig it out and to get all the compost to where it needed to be.  Miss T's son, Sam was waiting for us in the meadow and he explained that the Year 6 class last year had covered some of the meadow with black polythene to suppress the grass and weeds.  We pulled up the polythene and on Tuesday, we found lots of worms, slug eggs, slugs and lots of trails where the worms had travelled under the polythene, and the soil was wet, heavy clay.  On Friday, the ground was much drier under the polythene and there were a lot of nettle roots and some roots which looked like parsnips.  These were hogweed and hemlock roots and we worked hard to pull them all out.  On Friday we found millipedes and centipedes and there was a toad under one of the tyres that we moved too.  Sam's dog, Anubis spent both afternoons digging out rat and mouse holes too, and on Friday he very nearly caught a mouse that jumped out from under the polythene and disappeared into the brambles!

When we pulled the polythene up, Sam suggested that we re-lay it on another part of the meadow, so that Year 6 can do the same thing next year.  Eventually, we'll clear all the grass and weeds from the whole meadow!  We spread out the polythene and fetched big logs to weigh it down.  We also dug over the area we had removed the polythene from, we raked it over, then spread the compost over the area.  Sam asked us to make a line and sprinkle a pinch of wild flower seeds in front of us; we then moved back and repeated this until the whole area was covered in seeds.  Sam said that it would take two to three months before the seeds will start to germinate.  We surrounded the newly planted areas with big logs, to help prevent the grass from encroaching back on, and hopefully to stop people and dogs from walking over them too.

All this was very thirsty work and we all needed a drink, so Miss T squirted water from the drinking bottles into our mouths, which is very refreshing, even when she misses and squirts our faces instead!  We love this, and ask for Miss T to do this every week!

Miss T, Sam and Marg all said that we worked really well collaboratively, and the resilience and determination of some us was very impressive too.  There were some natural gardeners amongst us, and if any of you would like to come and help regenerate our Community Garden at the weekends, please get in touch with Miss T and come and help!

Mr James worked really hard too, digging, raking and unearthing and carrying big logs to frame our wild flower areas!

Have a look at our photos below.

Session 6 - 25th and 28th Feb

Getting Creative and Crafty in the Woodland!

It was lovely to be back on the Animal Park and in the woodland after our half term break.  This week we confidently worked collaboratively to make sure all the animals were well fed, groomed, fussed and provided with fresh drinking water.  We collected lots of eggs this week, and Miss T told us that one of the hens has gone broody.  This means that she has laid enough eggs on her nest to begin incubating them.  She lies quite flat over the eggs, making sure she keeps them warm enough.  In 21 days, any that are fertile, should hatch, so we are going to keep having a look each week to see if she is still on the nest.  Hens lay one egg per day on the nest, so after about 8 or 10 days, the hen will start to incubate all the eggs she has laid, so that they all hatch at the same time.  On Friday, we borrowed a couple of eggs to 'candle' them.  We shone a light through the eggs and we could see that there were dark shadows inside.  One of the eggs was completely dark, apart from the air sac at one end.  This means that the chick inside is developing well.  We compared the fertile eggs to some that were not fertile, and saw that the light shone right through the non fertile ones.

We went to the bench at the community garden at the top of the woodland this week.  We had our clay pots with us that had been drying in the classroom over half term.  We spent some time painting them and they looked amazing!  There were so many different designs, which you'll see on the photos.  While we were painting, we talked about affirmation statements which are short statements that inspire us to think positively about ourselves, such as "I am kind", or "I am proud of myself", "I learn from my mistakes", "I stand up for what I believe in" etc.  After we took a bit of time to think about this, we had a log cookie to write a positive affirmation statement on.  We drew a picture on the other side, threaded string through the hole at the top and hung them on a tree in the sunshine.  They looked amazing.

We took our pottery and our affirmation cookies home.

Well done Year 6, you really should be very proud of yourselves this week!

Session 5 - 11th and 14th Feb

Pond work and clay models

The Animal Park was still very muddy on Tuesday, but by Friday, it was just beginning to dry up a little.  Everyone knows which jobs they like best now, and it's good that we just go and get on!  We collected quite a few eggs on Friday, and we went into a dark pig shed to candle them, so we could see if they were fertile or not.  If the egg 'glows' when a bright light is shone through it, then the egg isn't fertile, but if there are shadows inside the egg, this could mean there is a chick forming.  Miss T said that it's a bit early for the hens and ducks to be incubating the eggs just yet, but we'll keep checking each week and hopefully, before we finish for Easter, we could get the chance to candle some fertile, incubating eggs, and maybe even see some chicks hatch!  The weather will need to get a lot warmer first though!

We went down to the pond again this week to check on and mend the dams.  They'd not been destroyed, but because we've had a lot of rain, the water had washed some of the dams away, so we spent some time repairing them.  We went down to the river, in groups, to find some clay.  There is a really good seam of fine grey clay and we gathered some of it in buckets.  Miss T explained that Year 3 were coming to the woodland on Thursday afternoon, and they were going to make some clay 'pinch pots' as part of the session, so we collected some for them too.

We all had a go at making something out of clay, and although, some of us didn't know what to make to start with, everyone really entered the spirit of this activity and eventually produced some really excellent models!  Mr Moss agreed to leave the models to dry in the classroom over half term, and we'll paint them the first week back.

The dams looked pretty good by the end of each session too, and some of us had a wonderful time snapping deadwood sticks by jamming them in the fork of a tree and pulling them back until they snapped with a 'crack'!

Have a look at our photos below, and at our wonderful clay models.

Session 4 - 4th and 7th Feb -

Orienteering with  a twist!

After visiting a very muddy Animal Park , and getting on with all the jobs to make sure all the animals are safe and happy, we went to the log circle in the woodland.  We had a look at the woodland maps, and we all remembered them from Year 4.  We also remembered how to ground the maps and we knew our compass points too!  Miss T was very impressed with our knowledge so she set us quite a hard challenge.  We put ourselves into groups of two or three, Miss T gave each group a number, which corresponded with a marker on the map, and then we went to the location of the marker in the woodland.  We found a log cookie with an instruction to go to another location, which we then needed to find by using our maps.  When we found the second location, Miss T said there would be 5 log cookies hidden - four cookies would have a letter on, and one would be one of our action cookies!  It was really quite complicated, but because we listened carefully to all the instructions, we were able to find all 6 of the log cookies, by carefully using our maps.  We worked really well in our groups, and there was some fantastic communication and debate about where the log cookies were hidden.  We brought all the cookies back to the log circle, the letters were all put together and we formed the words "Stonebroom Forest School".  We remembered the action cookies and were quite excited to make a mime for the rest of the groups to guess.  This was lots of fun, and on Tuesday, the group asked if they could make their own mimes up, and we had a lot of fun guessing those!

Well done, Year 6, your map reading skills really were excellent!

Have a look at some photos below.

Session 3 - 28th and 31st Jan

Pond work and woodland litter pick

The Animal Park was extremely muddy this week, but at least it wasn't frozen.  We made sure all our animals had everything they need to stay happy and healthy, and Miss T was really impressed with our team work and communication skills.  On Friday, a group decided to clean out one of the duck ponds because it was full of mud, so they had a discussion on how best to do this, then proceeded to empty the pond with buckets to get all the water out, then tipped all the mud well away from the pond so it didn't filter back in!  We left it refilling while we went into the woodland.  Both groups interacted really well with all the animals, and even Neddy, our shy goat, was happy to have a fuss and some food out of the fruit buckets.

We went down to the pond this week and on Tuesday, we found that the dams that separate the three ponds had been destroyed.  This is quite disheartening, because all the water simply drains away down to the river.  We discussed the need for the dams, to keep the water in the pond for when the pond life returns in a few weeks.  We saw a lot of fresh water shrimp, and some water beetles, but there is no sign of the frogs yet.  We split into two groups and one group went off to litter pick around the woodland, the other group stayed and worked hard to rebuild the dams and it was incredible how quickly the water levels rose in the bottom two ponds once our dams were secure.  We used rocks, sticks and lots of sticky clay to make the dams, so hopefully they will be strong enough to keep the water in the ponds so the creatures will have  better chance of survival.  

After 20 minutes, we swapped groups and the others went litter picking around a different part of the woodland.  On Tuesday, we found a total of 428 pieces of litter, and on Friday we found a total of 278 pieces of litter, which is great because that has now been removed from the woodland, but really sad too because it shouldn't be there in the first place!

A very productive week, Year 6, well done!

Session 2 - 21st and 24th January

Winter Scavenger Hunt

Even though it's only week 2, nearly everyone was happy and confident to go and get on with the various jobs on our Animal Park.  It's important to remember that we need to make sure all the animals have plenty of fresh food, water, bedding and cuddles each week.  They really do look forward to our visits and thrive on the interaction they receive from all of us!

The Animal Park was very muddy, as it usually is at this time of the year, so we did end up coming back to school, slightly muddier than when we went out!  Some of these year 6's just can wait to "fall over" in the mud!

We went into the woodland this week and Miss T gave us a Winter Scavenger Hunt to complete.  This involved finding lots of different natural items, eg. small cones, lichen covered twigs, rough oak tree bark and smooth and shiny cherry bark, but the most difficult item to find, was a skeleton leaf!  Once the other items on the list had been ticked off, everyone became absolutely determined to find the elusive skeleton leaf, and I must say that our Friday group found a couple of absolutely perfect specimens, which we are going to laminate and put on our FS display in the corridor!  Well done TK and Arlo for finding these in the meadow and the pond. We found a few more after this, and we learned that the best ones are found in water!  Once we had discovered lichen covered branches, we found them everywhere, and we discovered that there are several different kinds / colours.  Lichen is "a symbiotic organism that grows on rocks and trees that is made up of algae and fungi.  It is important for nutrient cycling and soil formation".  On Tuesday we found a huge clump of jelly ear fungus.  This is a non poisonous fungus, and is very floppy and squishy to touch.  It can be eaten, but should be cooked first, even though non of us thought it looked particularly appetising!

Miss T, Mr James and Marg were very impressed with the enthusiasm of both groups for this activity.  It was fascinating to watch everyone find more and more things and this activity inspired so many interesting questions!

While we were walking around the woodland, we talked about the areas where we will be working over the coming weeks.  We are hoping to start a wild flower meadow, which will encourage pollinators into the woodland; we will be mending the dams on the ponds and looking for signs of life as we move into Spring.  On Friday, we did see some tiny pond leeches, some fresh water shrimp and a few water beetles, so this shows that creatures are beginning to wake up after a long cold winter.

Have a look at our photos below...

Our First Week of Forest School - 14th and 17th Jan

Revisiting the Animal Park

Oh, I just have to say how lovely it was to have this class back in Forest School!  It was amazing how much you remembered, Year 6 and we had two absolutely super sessions on the Animal Park this week!

We had a job list, so you could all take time to remember what jobs we need to do every week.  We talked about what is needed to care for our animals and we remembered the 7 S's, to help us to do this.  These are things that all the animals (and us too!) need on a daily basis to make sure they stay happy and healthy.  They are Shelter, Space, Sustenance (food and water), Stimulation (things to play with), Safety, Sentiment (love and attention), Sanctuary (to feel safe, and have all these things, so they are happy and fulfilled).

Everyone worked so hard and made sure that all our jobs were ticked off the list.  It's important to make sure you do different jobs each week, so you all understand how much there is to do.  The animals were all very pleased to see us, and we took the fruit buckets from school down to feed everyone.  We have to remember to feed Olive, our little pink pig.  She doesn't come out of her enclosure very much when people are around because she gets a bit scared around a lot of people, so we just need to make sure she gets lots of fuss through the fence.  We also threw some fruit bits into Hamish, Dottie and Donut, who live in the big field in the woodland.  They were happy to see us too!

The Animal Park is very muddy, especially after all the frost and snow that has recently melted.  We made sure all the animals had fresh water to drink and we dug channels in the streams that flow out of the duck ponds to make sure the water flowed away properly.  We put hay in the goat sheds and we collected some eggs.  Miss T said that there aren't very many eggs at the moment, because the ducks and hens are having a bit of a rest over the winter months, but they should start laying more when the days get a bit longer.  Some of us rebuilt the barricade at the back of the Animal Park.  This is where lots of sticks and branches are piled up so the goats don't escape and go and eat the playing field!

A lot of us really enjoyed getting muddy too, so once all the jobs were done, we painted our faces and jumped around in the mud in Horace's enclosure.

We'll be visiting the woodland next week Year 6.  We'll go and have a look at the pond area, the meadow and the main Forest School site.

Meanwhile have a look at our muddy photos from this week.