It was quite a relief that the snow flurries last night didn't cause me any problem getting to work this morning or stop us having Forest School! There was plenty of snow on the mountains that we can see from the school grounds though:
As it was bitterly cold we had to be both well wrapped up and active whilst outside. So I explained our mission inside before we even went out into our forest area. We were going to use four of our senses to find signs of winter:
- hearing
- seeing
- touching
- smelling
We omitted taste for obvious reasons!
The first thing we noticed was that the birds had eaten most of the food we had left out the previous week. We had to collect in the pipe cleaners to make more to put out next week.
The children sat quietly for a short while so that we could see if we could hear anything... There was very little bird song and mostly just the sound of the wind! Then the children set off to use their senses to find something for all four:
Seeing
The youngest children had to climb trees to see the snow on the mountains high up and far away. They could also see that the leaves had fallen off the trees.
Hearing
As well as the wind they heard the sound of leaves crunching.
Touching
For a brief time they took off their gloves to feel things. Most of which were very cold or even freezing.
Smelling
There wasn't much to smell, although one local farmer had obviously fertilised his field! With a lot of snotty noses it probably wasn't the easiest sense to use..
We then took a tub of fallen leaves into school for a project to be done after lunch.
As part of looking at Winter we had talked about hibernation. So we helped some hedgehogs to hibernate by covering them in leaves to keep them warm:
The children really enjoyed ensuring that the hedgehogs were well covered. They also loved threading the last of the cereal onto the pipe cleaners to boost the food supply.
I am looking forward to more forest adventures in the New Year as next week end of term activities will prevent us from getting out and about. My forest leader course also starts this Sunday so I hope that I can get a lot more ideas to use with my class in 2018.
