Marking the boundary

With support the children decided where the boundary of our Forest School was. They took it in turns to choose which trees constituted the edge of the boundary and joined the trees together using red string. The picture shows two of the boys quality control checking the boundary line.

It was a successful and visual way of involving children in agreeing the boundary and made deciding the boundary fun rather than by an imposed rule.

What colour are you feeling today?

The first time I met with the group of children I'm working with we looked at the rings found inside a tree and talked about how you tell how old a tree was by counting its rings. Then, inspired by a technique I've seen artist, Talya Rochester, use we decorated our forest school artist books with a personalised tree ring design.

We started at the centre (the 'heartwood') and choose which colour to use by asking ourselves 'what colour am I feeling today?'.

Flourishing people

I came across this quote while researching and reading about psychological concepts of self esteem, self worth, self image and ideal self. I thought the metaphor beautifully encapsulated some of the thinking that underpins Forest Schools...

Carl Rogers, humanistic psychologist suggests that:

“For a person to ‘grow’, they need an environment that provides them with genuineness (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being listened to and understood). Without these, relationships and healthy personalities will not develop as they should, much like a tree will not grow without sunlight and water...Like a flower that will grow to its full potential if the conditions are right…so people will flourish and reach their potential if their ‘environment’ is good enough”

(Sean McLeod www.simplypsychology.org)