Hi RangerKris - this is something I'm keen to more about.
As forest school leader
We are currently building a new veg garden at school, with the rather grand aim that fairly soon this will be something every class will be expected to join in taking their turn with over the week.... no problem with getting the kids in there I can tell you. I've taken the tack of having 'trainee experts' (who will graduate at some point when I reackin they know enough) who can provide advice and guidance on an aspect. So far we have the Composters , the Strawberry Bunch (well the plants arrived and we had to do somehting with them) and the Spud Bods. Very popular and loads keen to be the next appointed trainees, even though we are under snow!!!
WE are very lucky with our site, having our own fairly large copse - like you I always let the kids use real tools for the job, and the worst that has happened was the rather over enthusiastic coppicing of some hazels --- the wrong hazels --- when I took my eye off the group and left them with a parent for two minutes!!!
Keep up the good work!
Not wanting to highjack the thread but hey, I was told about forest schools by an old manager of mine he told me that it would suit me down to the ground. Sure he was right i hated school with a passion and spent most of the time at the country park i now work at.
We have 4 school groups come to us a week, 10 one week 10 the next alternating from november to july. Ages 4-15 on different sessions we do all sorts of activities from tree faces to cooking on an open fire. we use tools from hacksaws to bill hooks and bowsaws. we go out to the woodland and look at coppicing and go puddle jumping and mud bank sliding when the weather allows. the only time we dont go into the woodland is if there are high winds.
I was the first Country park to set up forest schools in Kent and since passed it on to a college of mine as i wanted to get back to the tools. I enjoyed the forest schools and still do the older groups from the behaviour units. i might just have fallen in to this bracket if they were about when i should have been at school.
i totally understand where these kids are coming from. None of the other rangers will work this group as they all have trouble with them.
One of the best activities we do is an over nighter in the woodland where the group have to build there own shelters and cook there own food we also cook in under ground ovens which is amazing when you have been looking out for 20 people all day.
i could go on for ages about the benefits of the out door class room it teaches so much that they forget to teach in school right now i know i have good support from our early years advisor team, we done a session for 40 of the advisors and there was only 2 people that didnt go much on it as they turned up in heels and skirts hmmmmmm.
Hope this sheds abit more light on Forest Schools for you sunshine band we seem to be reading from the same page which is cool.
How can children learn about safety and dangers of tools if they dont get chance to use them. Im sure most of us on this forum are of the same idea as we all love being out and exploring new tools and ideas and making things.