Enabling Environments: Forest school diary - fire starter
Friday, September 28, 2012
Fire can be a useful focal point on forest trips, says Caroline Watts, forest school leader at Reflections Nursery and Forest School, Worthing, West Sussex
We build a fire almost every session, in part to help us keep warm but mainly as a focal point and so we can cook our own lunches. We have previously made pancakes, hot soup and beans over the fire. In fine summer weather, we don't always light a fire, though toda
y we made a small fire and ate our lunch of rice salad and fromage frais around it.
The children have responsibility for gathering the wood and we have taught them how to choose the right kind of sticks for building a fire - dry and snappy. The children try to snap them to test their readiness. Children often practise building a fire when they are playing at other times and places during the session. Preparing a fire requires a great deal of concentration, care and manual dexterity, in a similar way to building towers within the nursery.
A REAL SPARK
The children also practise using the fire striker to make a spark and take turns to try to light the fire, although responsibility for tending the fire remains with the adults. All t
he children learn that once the fire is lit they must sit down in the fire circle, and if they want to go to the other side they must always walk around the outside of the circle.
Soon the children begin to monitor themselves and others, reminding each other to go around the outside, often saying, 'Be careful of the fire' to the forest school leader.
The most magical thing about the fire is the way it mesmerises us all, and fuels the children's imaginations.
On the way home, the children often sing songs they have made up about the forest, and some will fall asleep on the minibus journey back to nursery. We find the groups in forest schools make strong bonds with each other, through the deep experiences they have together.
Reflections has operated a forest school programme for children over three years old since summer 2009. Four groups of up to 12 children go to the woodland by minibus every week (in all weathers) for at least 30 weeks a year. Families are sent a four-page diary of each visit.
