This week we used all our knowledge gained over the past few weeks to complete the RSPB Big Schools’ Bird Watch.

We joined 1000’s of other schools to work out which birds visit our school grounds. These our our results

Blackbird 5, house sparrow 1, carrion crow 8, blue tit 3, pied wagtail, 1 magpie 5, herring gull, 5 robin,1 pigeon 5, song thrush 3, goldfinch 5 red kite 1

Our last group spotted some small colourful birds on the alder trees on the other side of the school field. They were goldfinches! All children taking part will bring home a certificate this week.

Looking through the bird hide to see birds on the bird feeders

Filling up the bird feeders with fat balls

Ahed and Keelan using the toy birds to learn about ‘Herring gull’ and ‘Sparrow’

This week we played ‘Bird bingo’ to start the session, as a reminder of the names of birds. We included 2 more birds this week- a pied wagtail, that visits us after playtime and moves really fast, wagging it’s tail!

We also included the Herring gull as we see them every day flying in the sky and landing on the field looking for treats.

After a recap of the seasons, we reminded everyone about the need to feed the birds in winter. Today we made some cheerio bird feeders. We counted out 20 cheerios, and threaded them onto a pipe cleaner. We then ran across the school field ( whilst looking for birds of course) and hung them on the branches!

Our session began by identifying the birds we might see on our bird hunt. The children are recognising many of the birds now! Then we learnt this rhyme for each bird,

To help us see the birds, we each had a pair of binoculars to use. So off we went, around school to spot birds on a cold winter day! We saw crows, magpies on the roof, a robin, a pied wagtail on the playground, red kites in the sky, gulls in the sky. What an exciting bird hunt!

It was lovely to be back in our woodland this week, although it was very cold! We measured 3 degrees C on our thermometer.

This half term we are concentrating on birds. By the end of the half term we want the children to be able to recognise the birds that we see every day around school.

Here are photos of the birds we see every day at ACE

This week we have been thinking about our birds in winter. The food sources are limited now, so we have been making pine cone bird feeders. We spotted the robin having a feed, so they must be tasty!

This week we decorated the pine cones that we painted last week. We carefully wrapped some silver and gold string around the scales and chose 5 pom poms to squeeze gently between the scales.

We finished our decorations with a bow at the top!

In Forest schools this week, we looked carefully at a pine cone. We learned that they come from pine trees, and their job is to protect the seeds with their scales. We discovered that when a pine cone is wet, the scales close up!

Our task this week is to paint a pine cone green. This was a quite fiddly and we needed to hold the pine cone away from our clothes as we really didn’t want our clothes to be green. We did see some very green hands though!

We needed to ‘wiggle’ the paint brush right into the scales so that all the pine cone turned from brown to green!

This week was a cold week! But we still managed to work outside!

Here is a slideshow of our work this week. The pine cones will be decorated next week!

Year 1 worked very hard this week to finish the planting of these Woodland trust saplings. We are hoping that in spring we will start to see new growth on our saplings and looking forward to seeing the wildlife enjoy the new hedging.

Thank you to Mr Magnall who ordered Allerton CE Primary free trees to plant from the Woodland Trust. This was definitely an activity for Forest Schools and we decided that the bare metal fence at the back of school was a perfect place to plant our hedging.

First, we thought of reasons why we should plant trees.

Cameron said ” They give us air that we need to breathe,” Remy thought about the homes they provide for birds. We also talked about owls, squirrels, and all the mini beasts that have trees as a habitat.

We them looked at identifying the saplings to be planted.

The children chose their sapling and we then planted it in front of the fence, with a label.

Here are some planting photos!

This week we celebrated Diwali by making clay diwas. We decorated the clay with natural materials, berries, flowers, leaves and seeds. It’s amazing what you can find foraging around in the woodland! The children used tweezers to help create a pattern around the outside of the pot.

They really did look beautiful!

Storm Debi did force us to retreat inside for some of the time, but some groups were able to complete the activity outside!

Once all were completed, we put a tea light inside, lit the candles and finished with a Diwali song. Happy Diwali!

This week in forest schools we thought about the meaning of Poppy Day and why we wear poppies at this time of year. So, whenever we see a poppy, we know that we ‘remember’ but we also ‘hope’ for a time when there are no wars. After we made a poppy we lit a candle and took a few minutes to think about people in Ukraine and Israel.

Our finished poppies are on display in the Year 1 outdoor shelter if you want to come and look.

We made poppies from sticks and wool. First we wrapped black wool around the sticks. Then we added some fluffy redwood and weaved it around each stick! It was a challenge for some, but everybody competed the challenge and was proud of their poppy!

Can you spot our robin? He is getting really tame and comes to visit us in forest schools!