Awfully Wet Weather and the Great Badger House Discovery
It was wet, very wet, and cold. Despite this, the weather was in no way severe. The temperature was +3° C and although the rain was heaving down, there was no wind. Often parents worry about what seems to be a gung-ho attitude to continuing forest school in ‘bad’ weather. Of course, if one is properly dressed there is no really bad weather except perhaps winds strong enough to uproot trees. It was soon evident that some of newcomers to forest school weren’t prepared for the weather, mentally or physically. While everyone had the requisite waterproof out layers, coats and wellies, some hadn’t experienced being outside in rain much less cold. After a few minutes chat in our tarp shelter, it was clear chill was setting in so action was needed in the form of a bit of running and jumping about followed by the boundary walk. As we walked the boundary we looked at the barks of different trees, specifically ash and hazel. We found a few hazel nut shells and had a brief chat about who might have eaten the nuts. Much imagination about forest creatures was demonstrated including some of the cast of ‘The Gruffalo’.
Cold hands made fine movement based activities much harder than usual. The offered elder stem bead making had seemed ideal to be done under the shelter but while much praise for persisting, remembering correct tool use was given it was clear that alternatives were needed. We had a quick run about to various points on the boundary and back to the home place plus a bit of tree climbing. This warmed us up a fair bit but the rain was still lashing down even more heavily.
In order to be sure of a fire I had brought dry materials with me. Some of the children were able to say why we needed dry stuff- ‘So it will light’, ‘Water stops fires’ were among the offered reasons. I set up a Kelly Kettle base where it could be seen. All children took turns to come into the fire square and try the fire strike with me. Everyone achieved sparks with varying degrees of assistance. Some sparks caught on the tinder and a fire was alight. By a weird irony the fire lit and burned better than in on some previous drier days. Hot chocolate, biscuits and a bit of a sing song cheered the mood.
So what to do next?
While we finished our hot chocolate we had a chat about animals that might live in our wood. Foxes, badgers, snakes, mice, owls, squirrels and deer were all mentioned. Though the children hadn’t seen any of these, we’d seen assorted scat (poo) and tracks on various boundary walks and during free time. What sort of homes did these creatures live in? Discussion of animal homes brought us once more to ‘The Gruffalo’ which turns out to be a pretty good place to start. We chatted about the season, the weather and day and night as well as animals being shy. ‘Not the squirrels!’ came a call out, ‘They’re not shy- we usually see and hear them. It must be too wet for them today; they’ve stayed at home.’ Foxes dens, owls in trees, snakes in the brush piles came in and out of the chatter.
So what about badgers? Everyone knew what they were but not about where they lived. Hollow trees were suggested. Would everyone like to see where badgers live? Of course they would! We talked about how to behave so as not to disturb them: being quiet and walking softly were suggested- good proposals. None of the children had seen a badger; we thought about why this might be. Amy volunteered that this was because they are night time animals- well done Amy! The term ‘nocturnal’ was added to our forest school words. The children walked on tip toe in two groups of four. Each of the groups of four approached the sett (another good word to know) in turn and noticed the neatly dug badger loo before they noticed the sett. I explained that badgers were very clean animals who not only have a loo but who change their bedding daily. We talked about the bedding materials we could see as well as the freshly dug out earth. Tony offered that badgers must be quite big, maybe as big as some dogs. It’s easy to forget that children may have little concept of the size of a creature they’ve only seen in books. Tony had looked at the size of sett entrance and the amount of digging that had gone on leading him to realise that badgers were sizeable beasts. This was an impressive piece of deduction. There was considerable and interested discussion of what the sett was like inside- did it have bedrooms? A living room? A kitchen? After all, there was a very evident separate loo. The response that there were indeed separate ‘rooms’, though perhaps not quite as in our homes was met with delight.
As we gathered ourselves up to go home at the end of the session there was a happy buzz of chatter about badgers; the bucketing rain and chill were forgotten. So, from the somewhat miserable start we had managed to have a busy session with some unexpected learning through observation and deduction. The moral of all this is probably that the best laid plans need not be kept to and that even a soggy day in the woods where we follow our inclinations can lead to excitement.