Play in my sessions

Anyone who has ventured into my inside classroom at school will see that I enjoy being creative, having fun and making things as enjoyable and memorable as possible - even if I appear to be on the crazier side of creative!

Running an initial 6 week pilot has allowed me to explore the use if play for both learning and development. I have attempted to implement it in a variety of ways.

Games:

• "   Ice-breaker games/ check-in activity to ensure children feel part of the greater group and feel safe that we are all there together.
• "   Exploring the area and boundaries through using 1,2, 3 where are you? Children enjoy the challenge of finding good hiding places and beginning to get to know the area really well. This is a game that has been a huge hit with the children I am working with. They ask to play it every week and although there are other things that I have wanted to try with them, I have gone with it and they have enjoyed it and included it in their reflective blog posts most weeks. It has also been great for the children to realise that the game has become harder for the seekers each week as the trees and bushes have gone from small buds to full leaf.
• "   Find me games – 5 seconds to find something yellow. Again this game makes the children look closely at their surroundings as they have a mission to find something.

Imagination and creativity:

Quiet space: we decided to find our own quiet / sacred places within our forest area. The only rule was that it should be a small distance from each other. The children enjoyed exploring different places and then began to decorate and make their sacred, and often imaginative, places special to them. I had no idea that they would get so into this. Their imaginations really took hold as doorbells, doormats and hanging decorations were fashioned to make their place their own. Following on from this we spent between 3 and 5 minutes (I didn’t time it) sitting in our quiet space and listening to and looking at nature. This provided much needed quiet time for my very chatty and loud class who were all then completely buzzing about what they had experienced. Following on from this activity I received a letter from a parent saying how much calmer and more organised their son was after Forest School. The children have really learnt about respecting each other’s places and looking after and keeping organised their own spaces and understanding a little more about their culture and society through acting out all through imaginative play, as well as learning more about their natural surroundings. 

Entering our Forest School: each session we leave by the fire exit from the classroom and walk over to where our FS shed is going to be erected (hopefully soon) and then instead of heading straight over to the base camp, we enter via a woven path exploring the nature we see along the way: identifying species, holding branches and passing messages, sometimes health and safety ones, on along the line, and also noting how things are changing and growing across the seasons. Along the way we pass, “O’ Mighty Tree” – which is a tree with a lovely gnarled and interesting trunk; that looks like great eyes watching over the forest. We always stop and bow down to O’ Mighty Tree and ask permission to enter and repeat when leaving at the end of the session. Again the children have really bought into this and enjoy my silly rhymes that they repeat to the tree. This is creating empathy with the forest and learning about respect through play. Through my modelling using our imaginations for a sacred tree it I feel it is almost like giving the children permission to make believe.

PLAY, PLAY, PLAY!

Play at school - what would the parents say?
Parents have so much say and control about what and how their children are taught at school; gone are the days of teachers being respected as professionals despite the fact they have been through university. School is seen by many as a place where children are now brought up as well as taught academically; so the idea of play would make parent start complaining about why their child was playing rather than doing maths and English: short sighted.

I really had to research the benefits and importance of play for myself as I am used to academic teaching in the classroom, where my sense of humour and approach to teaching is my attempt at making learning enjoyable.

When thinking about the relevance of play within Forest School it is important to look at how children learn through play - I have tried to summarise the key principles.

The four key principles behind ‘Play England’s – Charter for Children Play’ are:

1. Play is an essential part of every child’s life – vital to his or her development. It is the way that children explore for themselves the world around them; the way that they naturally develop understanding and      practise skills.
2. Play is essential for healthy physical and emotional growth, for intellectual and educational development, and for acquiring social and behavioural skills.
3. Play may or may not involve equipment or have an end product. Children play on their own and with others. Their play may be boisterous and energetic or quiet and contemplative, light-hearted or very serious.
4. Children’s own culture is created and lived through their play.

Being in an outside environment/ space without the constraints of the walls of a traditional inside classroom allows children to follow their own lines of enquiry and interests through undirected play. The nature of an informal area allows children to explore and not feel confined by regimented learning, such as sitting at a desk and learning from a text book, where their work is either right or wrong. Children naturally feel more relaxed outdoors.

Looking at principle #1 is all about children exploring and learning for themselves about the world around them. Forest Schools allow children to go out into the world around them to explore, see and experience first-hand. It also allows them to learn new skills whilst playing and exploring; allowing them to relax and focus on learning these without thinking it is learning – as they perceive it as just play.

Principle #2 focuses on Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills – looking at lifelong learning and skills transferable to many different situations and roles. Forest School allows children to be outside breathing in fresh air along with physically exploring their environment and using the outdoor space to growth physically. Being in an environment that has uneven surfaces and low hanging branches enables children to develop their observation of their environment and to slow down and look around them whilst moving their bodies in appropriate ways to move around their outside area. Emotional and behavioural skills are developed in Forest Schools through the requirement of teamwork for a variety of situations. Children have the opportunity to experience having to communicate in order to move on. Alongside this they have the experience of success and failure when things do or don’t go to plan; which in its own turn develops resilience and empathy when they assist another child.

The focus of principle #3 is around the need for play to have not specific criteria, for example: solo-play, group play, partner play, energetic, quiet, process or end product. This is aligned with the Forest School approach of child-led learning and the flexible approach to the way sessions go. Forest School also provides options for children to work in their way of choice and encourages having a go.

Principle #4 focuses on how children need play to live out their experiences of society and culture. The imaginative approach of Forest School allows children to play and take their play in their own directions and therefore allows them to link this play to their own experiences of life; in order to make sense of them.

The Forest School approach fits in with the principles of play whilst also being in the natural world. It makes sense as children will feel so much more confident and relaxed: perfect for high quality and deep learning.