What Goes Into Preparing A Site For Forest School?
So the secret is out of the bag!
If you hadn’t heard we are technically back! Well to be specific I have a brand new private site and I have dates ready to go.
The site is a beautiful 100 by 100 metre area approximately and is a mix of both deciduous and evergreen tree specifies.
Deciduous meaning it drops its leaves each autumn and evergreen meaning simply that it maintains its leaves or more specifically needles throughout the year.
It’s hoped that this site will become a long term fixture as it’s a beautiful piece of woodland. Trust me to get excited by that ae!
But it truly is and it will enhance our provision even further and the potential for development.
For now though I will be running the summer sessions there and look for parental feedback at the end of the whole stint to see what they think of the location and what the children thought to the measures in place as a response to the return to normal phase of the pandemic.
The sessions will be starting on Monday 20th July as per the instructions I spoke about in the Facebook Live on Tuesday night.
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Now you may think, well you’ve got the go ahead Mark why are you not starting?
That is a superb question and the focus for today’s episode. In this episode I shall be looking at what goes into a preparing a site for Forest School.
So with any new site the first thing that needs to happen is several visits by the Forest School leader at different times of the day.
Why, well to check a variety of things but not least human activity at different points of the day.
Are there people actively using it?
What are they doing there?
How will this impact safe guarding?
When there the Leader will spend around 1 -2 hours maybe 3 also looking at some other specific things.
The first is the flora and fauna present the next is biodiversity and the third is accessibility.
The importance of identification as a Forest Leader cannot be understated for a number of reasons.
Primarily, UK forests are home to a number of toxic plants and fungi that grow wild. Young children who are keen to investigate their surroundings may possibly pick or ingest these plants, perfectly innocently, which may lead to medial complications.
This, therefore, requires the Leader to positively identify all present plants and fungi growing on or near the floor of the forest. Basically at child height!
By doing this the leader knows whats in the area and can advise the children accordingly.
If the worst were to happen there, i.e. a child eating something they shouldn’t, there is a high chance of this toxin being identified and dealt with by medical professionals which is pretty cool.
At the new site there is a wide a variety of tree species but few plants and fungi due to the area being un-managed.
This has left the trees to dominate and block out sunlight to the forest floor preventing further life. The other life we do have such as nettles are on the outskirts of the copse.
Another importance of identification is about preservation and conservation of the woodland and it’s sometimes potentially rare species of trees, animals or plants.
Understanding each’s role or status in the environment is essential when thinking about usage of an area and certainly management. Now our new site as I’ve just mentioned has been left un managed for some time and so has required and will need further, work to increase biodiversity.
The is usually done at Forest School and in woodland management generally through coppicing. This terms refers to the cutting down of a selective trees above the root level.
By coppicing you are not killing the plant but actually encouraging shoots to grow from the stump which can be used in trades or for craft.
It’s secondary or main aim, however you wish to look at it is creating space in the canopy layer. The canopy is the layer of the trees that has all the leaves.
Through coppicing certain trees, space for sunlight to hit the forest floor is enabled. This allows seeds, dropped or already in the ground to flourish and new life is able to grow so increasing bidodoveristy.
This also brings in shelter and food forms for certain animals, which if you remember back to biology and the idea of food chains at school, brings other bigger animals also.
This is also particularly done with rare or protected species. These are left untouched and the competing trees around are coppiced to allow more sunlight to get to the rare or protected species.
This allows it to thrive and potentially spawn seedlings to multiply it’s species.
Sometimes for the benefit of the woodland this may need to occur and speeds up the natural process that would happen in a woodland.
Through doing this, biodiversity, the variety of plants and animals in an area can also multiply and can bring about a wilderness paradise, which is amazing particularly in the world we live and for the children to interact with.
There is also, in the world we live in, the necessity to check for and remove litter from the site to ensure animals and indeed humans are not negatively impacted by other person incompetence of not being able to use a bin correctly. This has been a big problem at the new site and something I haven’t even broken the back of yet, but every piece helps.
One of the great things about the site though is it’s accessibility. The land is flat and is relatively free of obstructions. This is great for all the children from our youngest to our oldest our able to our disabled.
Forest School is all about inclusivity right down to access. The entrance and exit to a site is a key thing the Forest School leader has to think carefully about.
Through mapping out the route in and out and how this can be managed are really important factors for the sustainability of the area, as ultimately it will receive a lot of feet walking on it.
This links into what I about sustainability in the episode ‘Can Forest School Harm The Woodland?’.
Hand in hand with accessibility almost comes security. The need for the Forest School leader to be aware if the children are secured into a boundary or if there is the potential for members of the public to enter is of paramount importance as you can imagine.
The true beauty of the new site is that it is fenced on three sides and enclosed in a private field. It does have a public right of way going through but this is rarely used and was one of the draw points of the site. This will allow for the site to create a magical little world for the children that first visit it!
So all these areas needs to be taken into account before a session can begin at a new forest school site. You can see now why I haven’t immediately launched into a session and appreciated how cared for the planet and your children are by a Forest School.
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