Here are some photos from our 2nd forest school morning with 4T creating fun and easy leaf art!

If you have a go yourself at home, please send a photo to forestschool@allertonceprimary.com we would love to see your creations!

When the pond was built several plants were added, submerged under the water. These special plants play an important role in filtering the pond water, keeping the algae growth under control and providing oxygen to everything living in the pond.

Did you know.. these oxygenating plants grow fully immersed in the water and get their nutrients from the water through their leaves, not via their roots like other plants.

It has taken a whole term for these plants to work their magic in turning the water in our pond from green to clear. Check out the photos below, what a difference!

Excitingly we now have a super view of our growing tadpoles! To help keep our pond nice and clear, please don’t touch the water when having a look, we don’t want to disturb the careful balance of nature.

If you haven’t yet seen the tadpoles here is a video, they love to pop up to the surface to say hello! How many can you count?

This morning it was 4T’s turn for forest school, and it was all about leaves for us!

We had a good hunt around school for different sized and shaped leaves, noticing where the various types were growing.

Then it was time to get creative. The children really impressed us with their imaginative artwork!

If you would like to create your own leaf art at home it is really easy. All you need is some paper, glue a pen and some leaves. Please send in any photos to forestschool@allertonceprimary.com.

Our KS1 Rangers have successfully completed their first project – renovating our school bird boxes.

The first step was to locate the existing boxes. Before taking these down we were careful to check for any nests. Excitingly one box was in use, check out the photo below. It is very important not to disturb nesting birds.

Next the rangers got busy mixing natural colours to repaint with, to make the boxes more camouflaged and attractive to the birds.

Before…

Working hard as team ants to repaint in natural colours ?

The finished result!

We were able to investigate an old nest in one of the boxes, and see the different materials the birds had used to build their nest.

Finally, Hugo helped Jack to secure the boxes back in the trees. We considered a clear flight path to the box, as well as ensuring they faced different directions, not too close to each other.

See if you can spot the revamped bird boxes around school. Thanks for your help rangers!

Loads of ideas were generated during the first gatherings of our KS2 Forest School Rangers, great job guys!

We look forward to getting started on our first project, for which we might be putting our rangers’ building skills to the test..! Keep an eye on the blog for project updates.

Another busy morning with 3S, searching the school grounds high and low to find all the items on our scavenger hunt list. We had lots of great discussion around vocabulary, and how to classify the different things we found.

Today 3S took part in a forest school scavenger hunt. Their challenge was to find natural items that were soft, hard, rough, smooth, spiky, damp, green and crunchy. We found lots of variations for each item!

You could try doing the same thing next time you’re outside, using this list or you could make your own. 

Can you spot the mini beasts we found in the photos below?

Today we had our first meeting of the KS1 Forest School Rangers. We were so impressed with how many ideas they had to share!

Keep an eye on the forest school blog to find out more on the projects our rangers will be busy with this summer term. Great job rangers!

Our forest school groups have had lots of fun searching the school grounds for mini beasts. We noticed we seem to spot more mini beasts in the afternoon. I wonder why?

If you’d like to have a go at this challenge you could use the sheet below. Have a look around next time you are outside. You might spot mini beasts not listed on the sheet, if so, you could make your own list, or draw a picture of what you find.

Let us know how you get on in the comments below, or send an email or photos to forestschool@allertonceprimary.com. Happy mini beast hunting!