Wow!! What an afternoon of fun, laughter, and sun!!

As Mental Health Awareness Week is all about doing the things that naturally make us feel better, we got active in nature whilst connecting with friends and having fun.  These are all things that can help to improve our mental health.  Forest School is the perfect place to do this – and we do it every week!  Some rolling down the slope started the afternoon followed by a bare foot game of ‘toilet tag’.  We really tuned in to how playing with one another in nature made us feel.  Words like happy, excited, energised were used and we certainly saw and heard so much laugher.  This proves, it really does help our mental health!  It was such a lovely sensation of running around barefooted as we focused on our senses to see how grass on our feet and between our toes felt!

The pond has come alive with water lilies, dragon flies, big chunky tadpoles and there were even damsel fly cast skins on the plants poking out of the pond.  Damselfly nymphs  moult repeatedly, at the last moult, they  climb out of the water to undergo metamorphosis. The skin splits down the back, they emerge and inflate their wings and abdomen to gain their adult form.  The casts looked so life like, that some of the children were a little worried about holding them at first.  But they faced their fears and we soon got the hang of it.

Choosing time consisted of the muddy kitchen, which was very popular this week with all sorts of delicacies being whisked up, pond dipping, chilling in the hammock, hide and seek, making guacamole with foraged wild garlic and involving lots of vegetables being chopped using knives and making everlasting dandelion clocks.  These are so beautiful, like a moment in time preserved.  Do look at the photos below!

We were so proud that everyone tried the guacamole, and some Forest Schoolers even loved it.  The adults certainly did!