Wild Things Family Forest School is a weekly forest school for parents and their children. A forest school gives children the chance to play and learn in an outdoor environment. The children will learn to take manageable risks, experience outdoors in all weather, and initiate learning. Wild Things forest school will encourage children to love being outdoors. This will be done by allowing children:
Time to explore outdoors through free play, this will include:
• Tracking
• climbing trees
• rolling down hills
• jumping in puddles
Time to engage in more structured activities, such as:
• Making mud pies
• Using twigs, stick, stones, leaves to create pictures, people, animals
• Hunt for bugs
• Storytelling, singing and dancing
• Den building
• Making fairy and elf houses
• Making animal habitats – bird boxes, feeders
• Making kites
• Making hats, wands using sticks, leaves
• Bird watching
• Creating sculptures
• Planting seeds and bulbs for children to take home or to plant in community gardens. The sessions during the week are aimed at parents with children aged 18 months -4 years. Parents with younger siblings can of course attend and participate but the structured activities will be aimed at children aged 18 months -4 years. Holiday sessions will be open to the whole family, including school aged children. There will be time to explore the area, take part in a structured activity and end with a hot chocolate. Wild Things is run by Emma Hill who has 20 years’ experience of working with children and families. Emma is a qualified primary school teacher, developer of teaching resources for secondary schools to help develop key skills such as creativity and emotional intelligence, advisory teacher for before and after school clubs; children centre manager and mum of two lively boys! Emma has completed her Level 3 Forest School Leader qualification and is paediatric and outdoor first aid trained.
