Back to the grey and misty today - and very cold too - for my monthly day volunteering at Forest School with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust.
We learned about predators, prey and a little about tracking. We played a game called Prey & Predators, in which we divided into two team, one laying a trail and hiding and one tracking and finding, which was good fun. At the start of each session we also did a little woodland mapping. Each family group collected two sticks and we put them together to form a 'cartwheel' then each group walked away from their section of the wheel, stopping every 8 paces to collect something to bring back to the wheel to represent that area. Each team collected 5 or 6 items then we returned and laid them out, in order of finding, from the centre of wheel.
The middle of the wheel represents our group circle and the map is very rough depiction of our woodland area so we could see which direction to walk in we needed to find grass, or ferns, or blackberries (at the right time of year) and so on. This led to a discussion about habitats and from there we moved on to the prey and predators activities.
@pennystot I just volunteer at forest school, I don't have to come up with the ideas luckily. I do know that the leader got today's ideas from a book called Play the Forest School Way.
