Forest School
Forest School
At Radford Semele, we are really fortunate to have a Forest School area in our grounds and offer Forest School sessions as part of our Masterclass lessons. Forest School is a child-centred inspirational learning process, that offers opportunities for holistic growth through regular sessions. It is a program that supports play, exploration and supported risk taking. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner inspired, hands-on experiences in a natural setting.
As part of our work in 2023-2024, we began an exciting project by working with the Canal and Riverside trust. We adopted an area of the local canal to brighten it up for all of the canal side users, attract wildlife and extend the children's education during Forest School sessions.
For the past three years, we have also worked with Leasowe Farm on their Children's Forest project. Children’s Forest is a movement to inspire and enable children to plant healthy forest ecosystems that has arisen in response to the unprecedented challenges of our times. They support people and communities to start Children’s Forests in their areas. The Children’s Forest movement is designed to empower our children to engage in meaningful action in the face of climate change, and support them to activate the gifts of positive envisioning and future generational thinking.
Please see some photos below of our latest Forest School sessions.
2023-2024
Year 5 - Mastering knots and making dens. Some dens had additional wings for sleeping and even a swing! Great team work!
Year 5 - Practising knots, tripods and making a den.
Year 5 - Applying knots, making dens, swings and photo frames.
Year 5 - Learning knots.
Year 5 - Canal visit. They pulled out the weeds and planted petunias, begonias and dwarf stocks.
Year Two - Using willow to create a 'Tree Weaving'.
Year Two - Creativity with wild flowers.
Year Two - Team building, problem solving and forest fun games.
Year Two - Collecting wildflowers and making a creative picture.
Year Two - Our walk to the canal garden
Year One - Indoors making God's eyes because of the weather!
Year One - Completing our tree cookies and playing 'Meet a Tree'.
Year 6 - Visit to the Children's Forest.
Year 1 - Sawing tree cookies, hunt the frog, playing games and climbing trees!
Year 6 - Making mini teepees indoors because of the wind storms!
Year 6 - Creating canal themed art work which will be painted on marin plywood and displayed near our adopted area of the canal.
Year 6 - Canal Visit.
Year Four - Planting spring bulbs by the canal. We also camouflaged a hedgehog house and learnt about the local wildlife.
Year Four - Being creative making decorations!
Year Three- Using the drills and knives to complete their fairy houses. The children demonstrated great creativity, perseverance and generosity.
Year 3 - Using the drills and whittling the windows and doors of our fairy houses.
Year 3- We used the bow saw to cut a piece off a branch to make our fairy house.
Year 3 -The finished fairy houses. We used saws, drills, knives and finally paint.
Year 3 - Using the bow saw and making God's Eyes inside because it was SO windy!
Year 3 - Team building games.
