With the Olympics about to close I’m already anticipating the gap its going to leave in my life.  Normally I hardly ever watch sport, but for the last 2 weeks I have been glued to the television enjoying seeing the best of the world’s sportsmen and women compete and, like most of us, have taken huge pride in seeing how well Team GB have done.  We’ve even been lucky enough to visit to the Olympic park after securing some tickets for the track cycling.  (We saw Chris Hoy and Laura Trott compete in their first rounds for events they eventually won – I can honestly say it was the most exciting thing I have ever spectated!)  All of this has left me examining my difficult relationship with sport.

Most of my family did well in sport, but I was the exception, proving fairly mediocre in most things I tried.  I showed early promise in swimming but when it came to secondary school and having to train regularly to stay in the team, I didn’t have the committment.  I quite enjoyed games, but not being gifted at hockey, tennis or netball, lessons soon became a became more endurance than enjoyment and like many teenage girls I went off participating in sport, and wasn’t above making up excuses to get out of PE.  Then some enlightened teacher invited a few of us to go rock climbing and suddenly I realised you don’t have to compete against other people to enjoy the thrill of and stretching your body and mind and that outdoor pursuits can be a real buzz. This opened the door to canoeing and mountain biking and these days I most enjoy hiking and wild swimming as a means to get the blood pumping and clear my mind of any stress and pressure that builds up indoors.

The much publicised London 2012 goal is to ‘inspire a generation’ and I am completely behind that idea but hope that within the drive to get children participating in sport we do not lose sight of the bigger goal; to get everyone actively enjoying physical exercise as a healthy habit for life.  Not everyone can make it as the next Mo Farrah and Jessica Ennis but they shouldn’t be put off being active if they don’t have the talent to make the team.  An hour in a gym would bore me to tears but I’ll walk up mountains all day for the pleasure of it.  Likewise children who claim to not enjoy PE at school,  run, climb and scramble around the woods for hours at forest school without even realising they’re exercising.

Competition is important; I doubt our gold medalists were inspired by the non-competitive school sports days where ‘everyone’s a winner’ but nor should any child be trying to bunk off school for their dread of coming last, as a friend of mine recently reported about her daughter who I know to be a highly adventurous and able outdoor girl.  Helping children to turn their natural instincts for active outdoor play into regular enjoyable activity as they become teenagers and lifelong lifestyle habits as adults should be our ultimate goal.  Yorkshire athletes did really well at the Olympics (we’d have come 11th in the medal table if we were a country!) and I’m sure our wonderful landscape has had a hand in motivating them to run, swim and cycle to greatness.  The Olympics has inspired me to encourage more sedentary adults to join me in getting off the sofa and enjoy being active outdoors, rather than the face the embaressment of lyrca or the tedium of exercise machines at the gym.  But right now I’m off to settle down on that sofa and watch the closing ceremony.  Well done Team GB!

I don’t know when they became minibeasts. They were creepy crawlies when I was a child, then became insects or invertebrates if we wanted to be more accurate about it. But minibeasts is the term children are now taught and I like this as the catch-all term for everything from worms and snails through ladybirds and bees to spiders and centipedes. It gets you out of the messy business of having to count numbers of legs, but the term ‘mini-beast’ also makes me think of them of smaller versions of larger animals and puts me in mind of herds of woodlouse grazing dead logs like antelopes on the savannah or fierce ladybirds stalking their prey like lions, which is no bad thing.

Minibeasts is now firmly on the primary curriculum so there’s lots of opportunities to incorporate minibeast hunting into an outdoor session. Equipping them with magnifying glasses, trowels and plastic pots and sending them off to dig holes, turn over rocks and peer under leaves, it is always fantastic to hear their delight at what they find. Adults coming across the Big 6 on a safari would not get as excited! Going on some mini beast hunts with some 4, 5 and 6 year olds recently I noticed how reactions split into 3 camps; the fearful who scream at anything that moves, the curious who want to pick it up and hold it and the bloodthirsty who want to kill it. The sequence usually goes something like this; Curious finds a beetle and manages to capture it in her hand, she shows her trophy to Fearful who screams and tries to run away, but then inches back to have another look. Bloodthirsty comes over to see what all the fuss is about. When the beetle drops from Curious’s hand onto the ground, Bloodthirsty stamps on it before it can escape. Curious is now furious and Fearful becomes tearful.

The challenge for the adult is bring together these three perspectives to a position where we can learn about the animal and its habitat while still being respectful of it and its need to go about its business.  Feeling afraid of tiny creatures and wanting to needlessly kill them can come from the same position; disgust.  Adults naturally react badly to finding small creatures in the wrong place (e.g. in the house, in food or in their children’s hair!) so children pick up ideas about mini beasts being dirty pests.  But in the great outdoors its us that are invading their space so its an opportunity to learn about their fascinating world and how each slimy slug, wriggly worm, scuttling spider and burrowing beetle has a critical part to play in the life of the woods.  I’m not great at recognising all the different species so sometimes take a book or reference cards out to help with identification, but mainly I’m happy if our explorations just help children be more comfortable around minibeasts and caring for the world around them.  Trouble is persuading some children to show a little less love and attention.  Many are the worms and woodlouse we’ve had to rescue from being made a ‘nice house’ in an empty yogurt or carried home in a cardigan pocket full of fluff.

What would playgrounds look like if children could build them themselves? Maybe something like The Baui, an adventure playground in Hamburg, with its huts, towers, bridges and ladders that the children had created from scratch.  I’ve just got back from a study trip with Meynell Games, looking at play and playwork in Germany where I’ve been inspired by some truely great practice.  At these construction playgrounds children are given wood, tools, nails and free reign to build the playspace as they chose.  The concept is not unique to Germany.  There is one, The Big Swing, not far from me in Eccleshill, Bradford, but its the only one I know of in West Yorkshire whereas in Hamburg and Berlin there seems to be one in every neighbourhood.  Thousands of children and young people are able to spend all their free time hanging out in these freeform playgrounds that they’ve made for themselves.

We visited  a wide range of play settings and saw the importance these city cultures place on quality play opportunities.  The school playgrounds we saw were not designed by children, but the landscape architects had consulted with them first and incorporated their ideas into the plans.  What results in an exciting space that offers engagement and challenge; 7ft walls to jump off, steams to play in, hillocks to roll down and secret hiding places where the teachers can’t see you.  It’s enough to send the Health and Safety Officer into meltdown, but its actually had a positive effect on accident rates; there are more accidents but they are a lot less serious i.e. bruises and grazes not broken limbs and concussion (a fact  duly noted by their insurers).  When you think about it, when all you have to play in is a rectangle of tarmac you’re more likely to climb the walls that surround it or run across it at full tilt to find some level of challenge.  As may people are now recognising, taking managed risks is important to gain an understanding of ourselves, stretch our abilities and consequently learn to challenge ourselves in other areas of our lives.  If children are wrapped in cotton wool and don’t learn to manage their own risks, as young adults they may play it too safe or take unacceptable risks through a poor awareness of danger.

There are some brilliant examples of exciting and challenging playspaces in the UK but the ubiquitous primary-coloured swings/slide/climbing frame combination is all too familiar wherever you go in the world.  Having grown up with these we might ask ourselves ‘what’s the harm in fixed equipment and safety matting?’, but the trouble is we also grew up with playing outdoors, building dams and dens and generally running free whereas today’s children are much more supervised.  The school playground or the park offers the most free play many children get, so we need to make sure it offers variety, risk, challenge and flexibility.  We need a wide range of materials, heights and surfaces, we need loose parts which can be arranged and rearranged according to the game and most of all, we as adults need to feel confident in allowing children to managing their own risks.  Its time to stop playing it safe.

At parents’ evening last week I was flicking through my daughters’ literacy books. Story after story concerned adventures in the woods; getting lost and having to build a den to sleep out, meeting bears and other wild animals, cooking campfire teas for fairies. Some of the inspiration for this writing must have come from their experiences at forest school. Working in schools, I often hear teachers say that pupils are struggling with writing, not over pencil skills, phonics or spelling, but because they don’t know what to write about.
As a child I was an avid reader of Enid Blyton stories. My siblings and I would roam the countryside looking for Famous Five style adventures. (Once we did find some stolen treasure, but that’s another story). We built dens and campfires and cycled or walked for miles only coming back when we were hungry, but these days children have nothing like this freedon. Our worries about traffic and stranger danger mean we keep our children where we can see them. TV and computer games keep them occupied indoors and experiences outside the home are often prescribed and controlled; dance classes, swimming lessons and visits to the shops. There seems little space and time for children to play freely and invent their own stories, so its no wonder some are not inspired to write.
I’m working with a year 1 group this term (5&6 year olds) and we’re focusing our forest school on storytelling. So far we’ve created a story together about an old lady, a dragon and some burried treasure. The outdoor space and freedom to act out the adventure means the story has become real. (I knew this had happened when one of the children complained the dragon had just bitten her!) We’re collecting the photos and drawings in a class book which the children can write in week by week. Like all children they are naturally inventive and I’m enjoying hearing about fairies with spots and heros with nettle hair and huge moustaches. Their teacher has taken the book back into the classroom to encourage more writing in between sessions; I look forward to seeing the stories evolve.
Nature has always inspired people to write and children are no exception. I have a collection of drawings and writing that children have given me following forest school (e.g. “Forist shcool is the best shcool ever”). I’m going to scan them and create a gallery on my Facebook page, because they inspire me that this is a job definately worth doing

How muddy is too muddy? Forest school programmes run all year round and given our British climate we are lucky to be able to experience a wide range of weathers from hot and sunny to damp and rainy, often all in the same day. We’re outside a good chunk of the day so whatever the weather is doing, we feel it first hand and encounter its effects whether its slippy surfaces, a breezy fire or steam rising from your wellies. Last week I ran a session in the snow with some pre-school teachers and we enjoyed exploring the play possibilities it offered, such as making footprints and slides. I love the fact that the drama of the changing seasons mean that sites never look the same from one visit to the next. On our weekly sessions we can observe the tiny changes such as the trees gradually coming into leaf, puddles drying out to dust. Our St Ives and Middleton Woods forest school programmes run in the school holidays so there is 6 or 7 weeks between each one and the children comment on the profound changes to their bit of woodland; the reduced light levels due to leaves on the trees, the leafy woodland floor becoming a carpet of bluebells. (more…)