Sticks and Ropes Forest School Sheffield

Week 1: Celebrating Guy Fawkes 

This week we tried to remember why we celebrate on the 5th of November, bon fire night / Guy Fawkes.We re-enacted the daring gun powder plot staging a rescue of Guy Fawkes and trying to rewrite history. Sadly Guy Fawkes didn't manage to escape even though there were numerous attempts! We have experimented with how we can make snakes glow and we learned that next time we should maybe try to do the session over night. They did light up though! 





























Week 2:Capturing Autumn on a canvas

Today we discussed the excitement of Guy Fawkes night from the week before, and found out who went where to celebrate the fireworks! We also found out that something had knocked over the wildlife camera, again! No footage to expose the phantom this time either.. As we slowly arrived and gathered the remaining leaves of  autumn, we set up the stage for creating our leaf-print scrolls. The children created very imaginative pieces of art, with their spirit names written in an ancient dialect to sign their work. We then celebrated the completion of the task with some games, and potentially a new member of the group joined us for the afternoon. The festival of colours is very much under way!

































Week 3:​ Festive Fabrics

After a coupe of days of continued rain this week our woods were significantly changed. We were greeted by a new river at the entrance, and a blanket of leaves that made the soil soft and encompassing. We replicated some of Autumn's colours on fabrics and explored different patterns by mixing colours and using rubber bands to help fold our materials, the ancient art of tie dying! We then followed the rivers and explored new areas of the woods in a game of danger and direction. After surviving this challenging exploration, we told stories by the fire and did kill all the characters at the end from our rather confident position an hour or two before going home, and being in the warm again! 






























Week 4:War Colour

This week we declared war on the monochrome. Children took the lead in coming up with their own ideas and projects of what to build, leading to all sorts of creations. We build catapults, sling shots, a pinata, bows and arrows and targets of all colours and shapes. We had only one aim in our minds, how can we create explosions to spread colours all around us. We celebrated a birthday and we shared snacks and marshmallows by the fire. A fire that we managed to build thanks to the kit of one of our children. It's great to be prepared!






























Week 5: Colourful Jewellery

It is lovely to witness how children can take initiative if allowed the space. This session even though we had planned a different project for them, some children requested to go on an adventure walk to find mistletoe to create beautiful holy wreaths, while others, independently put their safety gloves on, took knives and sat down to whittle some spears to practice hitting our woodland targets. For our project we melted pewter and we all tried to see who was worthy enough to pick up our mini Thor hammers.  All in all it was a very busy session where I think we could have all stayed even longer in the woods, creating things, playing and having fun together. 





























Week 6: Whittling  and Decorating

This week we have embraced the coldness and festive session  that is upon us. When arriving to the woods we found our little pond covered in ice and we realised we do need the biggest pieces of ice that we can extract. Why? I will need to guess.. Sitting around fire we learned how to do a stop cup to be able to whittle a Christmas tree and we discussed about our new play. 'Who would be the director?', 'What props do we need?',  'What will be our play all about?' and 'What roles will we all have in it?'.






























Week 7: Winter Celebrations