We had a fantastic session in the woods today. Our children are growing in confidence in the woodland environment.
We were interested to see if there were any changes to the woods after Storm Ali visited last week. We did see several trees that had fallen over and lots and lots of leaves and sticks on the ground. We remembered that the rain had turned the path into a river and we saw how the water had washed away some of the stones and mud and made the path all bumpy.

We were visited by several dogs during our session today and it was lovely to see how our children are learning to respect animals and beginning to understand that they should stand still and wait until the dogs have gone past. We were unlucky however that one passing dog took a fancy to one of our children’s mitts and ran off with it! If anyone finds a (lovely) mutt with a mitt in the neighbourhood please let us know!

We tried out a new activity today and put up a hammock. The children rapidly became experts at getting on to and out of the hammock. They thoroughly enjoyed the gentle swaying motion of swinging in the hammock and gazing at the trees and sky.

We were excited by the number of different mushrooms and toadstool we’ve been finding and also are becoming experts at spotting them in lots of different places. Some grow high up on trees, some in the grass and some in hollows beside the tree roots. There are so many shapes and colours. We have been learning that some mushrooms and toadstools can make us feel very sick so that we never try to eat them and that its best not to touch them. Sometimes we might touch one accidentally though and that’s ok, we just need to remember to wash our hands.

We’ve also been thinking about where the birds and animals in the woods live. We spotted some nest boxes on our walk to the woods today and we think it would be good to make a bird box and put it up in the woods for the birds to make a nest in. We found a den that looked just like the Gruffalo’s den so we decided to see if we could find where Fox, Owl, Snake and Mouse live too!

All in all, a huge amount of fun and just as much learning packed into 3 hours this morning 👍🏻