For our youngest children we start to build a love of the outdoors by exploring light and dark in the wooded area, going on nature trails and learning the names of insects during bug hunting and exploring their habitat.  They start to explore natural objects and discover many uses such as making music, building objects and creating natural land art with them.  They are excited to discover the sounds the weather makes around them and explore mud and water in the garden with mud paintings on the trees and jumping in puddles. Exploring the den’s built by the older children is a particular favourite activity. Their outdoor experience is also often supported with walks to other local forest area’s.

As children get older, we start to introduce a range of outdoor tools and teach the children how to use them safely such as hammers for printing leaves and potato peelers for whittling wood.  We also introduce special knots like lark’s foot to make swings in the trees and take it in turns to swing on the rope.  The Great British weather also provides lots of opportunities to build shelters and use them to listen to the wind and rain, jump in the puddles and paint with the mud.  Children love to climb the trees in the woodland area and gather autumn treasure collections to create collages and create land art.  One of the most exciting activities is when we introduce the fire pit to cook bananas to enjoy with ice cream and celebration food such as hotdogs and jacket potatoes on Bonfire Night.  Children abide by the safety rules, which are explained in a strong but child friendly manner using terminology such as ‘safety circle’ to describe out of bound areas.  The fire pit is in use throughout the year and gives the children an invaluable opportunity to become aware of this natural element in a very safe and controlled environment.

As the children become more confident and familiar with the forest environment and activities, the creative skills and use of tools increase in accuracy.  Autumn treasure collections are used to create mandalas and natural prints. New knots are introduced such as the ‘closed clove hitch knot’ used to make dens, shelters and hammocks.  The children make decisions and problem solve, for example, to decide where the best place to build a waterproof shelter will be.  They then enjoy sitting in them and creating musical instruments with their natural objects such as drum sticks and shakers to mimic weather sounds, using them as percussion whilst singing nursery rhymes/songs.  The creative opportunities are endless amongst this wonderful environment and children are encouraged to be imaginative.  They may build homes for their teddies with sticks or create small world roads. They may be given mathematical challenges such as putting their sticks in order of size or be asked to collect cones to decorate for the garden.  It is a joy to see them grow in confidence jumping independently, tree climbing, gathering and cutting logs.  Safety rules for the use of tools and the ‘blood bubble’ rule are consistently reaffirmed along with the use of the fire pit to cook a variety of exciting foods such as vegetable kebabs, which are enjoyed by all.  As with younger bases, our exploration of the outdoors is sometimes supported with walks to other local forest area’s whereby children can learn about the different variety of trees and wildlife.