12th-15th September
This week has been a busy week with school starting again and routine appearing back in our life again. All went well and I have started research on the next assignment which has excited me. I am rediscovering my love of education theories and it is bringing it all back and is highlighting again for me why I went into education in the first place. I get so excited by the fact that everything within the philosophy of Forest School echoes all of my own beliefs and it is so good to hear them again and rekindle my love for the job. This week for the first time I will have Monday and Tuesday on my own to immerse myself in my studies which will be brilliant as I have not yet completed Unit 1 and the middle of September is fast approaching and my aim was to complete it my the end of August-but oh well…I know that the learning process and journey is taking place within me and at the end of the day that is the most important thing. Really excited to have some time designated to the course as all summer I have only been able to work in the evenings once my son has gone to bed. So my hope is that this will free more of my evenings up again….it will also be great to have a long run of writing and reading time instead of snippets. Hopefully next week I can report how productive I have been.
16th-12th September
It has been a new experience for me dropping my boy at school and then having the day to do my work. I have started my next assignment and have enjoyed rereading educational theories about child development and teaching theories. I could not quite believe how fast 6 hours can go…and found myself having to leave my work and collect my boy from school before I knew it. But it has been lovely to have some time to myself to properly dedicate to the course. I now feel I have a good understanding of the abilities of the children that will be attending the Forest School sessions but of course I have a great advantage as a teacher myself. I naturally am coming to this having a good background knowledge about their curriculum in the school and the basic abilities of children in the Early Year Foundation Stage and Key stage 1. However, I don’t want to come at this with an attitude that I already know and I have really enjoyed refreshing myself and hope that I can integrate this knowledge not only into my Forest School practice but my own teaching as well.
15th-20th September
As my research has continued this week, I have discovered more about how Forest Schools and educational theories link and it has been good to remind myself about the role and job of a Forest School leader. There are so many aspects to the role from facilitator, observer, curriculum developer to ecologists and woodsman. I am still working on the assignment but am over halfway through so I would like to complete it on Monday/Tuesday. I am enjoying discovering more about Forest school education practice and the next part of the essay that I need to write is about environmental identity and the benefit of nature on our lives.
It has been a bit of a funny week -it started well but then on Thursday morning my son woke up with a temperature and cough so we had to try and get him a test for Covid-19 and we have had to isolate again while waiting for results. Thankfully, the test came back negative so we can venture back into the world again next week.
20th-27th September
I just completed my assignment I feel like I am getting slower and am worried I am not going to get through the course in time.
I really enjoyed finding out more about Forest School educational theories that are the backbone of all the teaching. It has helped me refocus on this after so much learning about the environment although I realise, they will always stand hand in hand. I also found it interesting to find out more about theories based on child development and nature as well and how the first stage is really to get the children to form a relationship with nature. I am feeling a bit frustrated that the course content is down as I wanted to be ready to start thinking about my next assignment tomorrow. I think I will have to email the office to find out how quickly these links will take to fix.
27th-1st October 2020
I have started work on my next assignment which is about risk assessments. It has been interesting to learn more about the ecological impact of Forest School activities on the landscape. It has also made me think about the activities that we might do and how these might affect the ecosystem within the woodland coppice area. I have also had a go at some risk assessment on activities that have higher risks such as cooking on an open fire using knives. An important part of risk assessments in forest schools is also a benefit assessment which also really has made me think about the real benefits of taking risks and the confidence, self-esteem which is built from learning these skills. It has been interesting, and I realise that this is a really important part of the setting up process. The documents that I have created this week will be the foundation upon which my Forest School will be based.
