From their very first steps into our Forest School the children learn how to manage potential risk whilst still gaining the benefit of the experience. This may be as simple as changing the speed at which you move when it’s muddy under-foot to more specific activities like Stick Safety training. Through this training session the children work out how to move and handle sticks, branches and logs of different weights and sizes. These are resources that the children will use all the time so getting this embedded early on gives the children much more independence to create as they grow through our Forest School. This session is revisited as the children develop and as they want to experiment with risk differently. It’s always interesting to see the varied solutions that they come up with, what may seem like a good idea at first can sometimes get shouted down by the group as they spot potential hazards. They are asked questions such as “When is it ok to throw a stick?” this will often bring up fierce debate, the children try out their theories and then settle on a plan of action which is immediately put in place in the woods. This testing of their ideas helps them to hone in on what works for the group, it encourages them to support each others abilities and finally gives them the freedom to play and create without serious risk.
You can see how busy they got in the end and did a really good job moving lots of den building material that they thought was interfering with some tree recognition games they wanted to play.
