Forest School

 One of the benefits of home education is that we can match our curriculum to the kids energy levels, the weather and what happens to be going on that day. 

Today was warm and gloriously sunny.  We started with Guitar, then a play date, then home for snacks and French and Phonics, then lunch followed by the afternoon spent in imaginative play in the local woods, where we also told stories, sung songs and chatted to dog walkers.

The main game was part of a story Ollie was dreaming up about living in the woods, so naturally we needed a den and a campfire.

 The boys worked co-operatively and showed perseverance in gathering the materials they felt were needed, giving and taking directions from each other and assigning themselves areas of responsibility.  I could not have crafted a lesson plan to have as effectively drawn these features from them as simply going to play in the woods achieved with no pre-planning.

 There were times the boys were feverishly active, and at others they just sat by my side on a log, eyes closed, faces up to the sunshine listening to the birds.

 I love the rich social element to our lives and frankly go a bit mental when I don't see friends for a few days, but I also relish these other times when it's just us and I am focused entirely on the boys.  No housework shouting at me, no trying to hold on to the thread of a conversation with a friend in the midst of constant interruptions of 'I done poo! Wipe my bum!' and the like.  Just us, the wind, the sunshine, the birds, the trees, the mud and the bugs.

Ollie found he could swing himself upside down under a log.  Toby found, repeatedly, that he could not, but he seemed to enjoy the sensation of falling off enough to keep doing it. 

I have read that spinning around, hanging upside down and moving all parts of their bodies in all ways are vital to children's development of balance and the eventual ability to sit still.  There's a theory that children fidget in class because they haven't had the opportunities to develop in this way.  I think children fidget in class because they're children and their brains haven't yet learned to ignore the messages from their body that sitting still for long periods of time is horrible for your health.

We watched little hunting spiders racing around on the log piles, and examined the perfectly sculpted tiny sporangia of the moss growing at the base of the coppiced sweet chestnuts.  We talked about how coppicing works, why it was done to produce poles and wood for charcoal manufacture, what that charcoal was used for (the name of a nearby estate 'Tilekiln' gives a clue).  We looked at newly coppiced areas compared to those with a full season of regrowth, and others that looked like they hadn't been cut for 30 years or more, and the difference this made to the light levels reaching the ground, and the flowers that would grow, and the butterflies that would come.

There was even time for what Ollie called 'arts and crafts' where the boys used charcoal they found to decorate the cut faces of the log piles before our slow meander home when the little voices piped up 'I'm huuuungry'.


Note to folk reading this and thinking this is some kind of magic because walks with kids don't go down like that for them, or feeling incompetent because the parenting blogs make it all seem so easy:

        It all sounds pretty idyllic, and it was, but I don't want to put pressure on folks whose experiences of going out with kids may differ by not giving the full picture.  This day was lovely, but we've had our fair share of whinging, griping, incessant demands for food, or the toilet, or being too tired on other days.  We've had dog dirt.  Lots of dog dirt. 

On this day our walk to the woods was marred by the discovery on the path running behind our house of a load of fly tipped pig parts including trotters, an abandoned cooker and a kettle barbecue.  All of which had to be reported to the council when we got home. 

I walked home by a different route despite the protests of the boys who wanted to see the 'dead meat and flies' again (not sure if this is just because they're kids, or if our being vegetarian adds an element of interest in the less known).  This different route took us through the thickest stickiest yellow clay you ever saw, which necessitated me standing outside for 20 minutes scrubbing boots under the outside tap.  Fortunately the boys are now big enough to be given instructions to put dirty clothes by the washing machine and put clean ones on and to mostly do it first time, although sometimes it's 'funner' to run around with pants on their heads instead.

Is doing stuff with kids tough?  Often.  It can be tougher than anyone would ever believe before they had kids.  Just leaving the house with everyone dressed can be a major challenge in the early days.  But the key to anything is perseverance - the same thing we want to see in our kids.  So, you went for a walk after spending 45 minutes trying to get everyone out of the house, you got a bit lost, someone wet themselves, you had a moment when you thought you'd lose your mind if you told someone one more time not to put that stick up their nose.... if nothing else you had an adventure, the kids were away from four square walls for a couple of hours, you saw them light up inside when they got filthy and didn't get told off, and each time the outing gets easier, the kids get more self reliant and you get more and more idyllic moments to hold in your head for when you need it most.

Toddle Waddle 2014

Today we completed the annual Toddle Waddle in our local park.  The event is organised and run by a number of organisations with the aim to get little children walking and having fun outside.  There is also the option to raise money for your chosen organisation through sponsorship.

We walked today for the Play and Learn Service (PALS) who run the play groups we go to.  Last year PALS raised enough for a nice tee-pee play tent, and lots of other local nurseries and groups also raised money for new play equipment.

It is a lovely day with a real community feel as you bump in to all sorts of people from different groups.  This year we even roped in my mother in law who kindly made a fantastic duck outfit which was worn by one of the volunteers stewarding the event.  This confused Toby since the last person he had seen wearing the outfit was his Daddy and the volunteer got lots of long hard looks before Toby was convinced it wasn't him.

I think we are particularly lucky in the effort local organisations go to in providing opportunities for children in our area, but it is well worth keeping your eyes open to see what is going on in your own neighbourhood.  If there isn't much going on, perhaps you might have a great idea to get people together yourself, maybe with a street tea party, or organising a play date in the park for your children and their friends with a picnic and some outdoor toys.

If you are lucky like us to have it all organised for you, it's well worth popping along to as many things as you can.  By showing your support with your presence you help to ensure the success of events which makes it worth while to the organisers to keep offering these things.  Each and every event, from the smallest craft course to the biggest play in the park is a masterpiece of organisation and form filling, so it's up to us to step up and make sure that they're well attended.  The toddle waddle today was a great example of a community coming together and I hope that it continues to thrive for many years to come.

My 100th Post: Risk and reward in outdoor play

 There has been a wealth of articles and research recently extolling the virtues of playing outside and laying all the problems of the current generation on the fact that they don't. 

I totally appreciate the reasons why parent's stopped letting their kids play outside.  When I was a kid I was 'the one with weird parents who won't let her out' (in the words of my classmates at age 10 or so), but now it has become the norm. 

Whether it's fears over stranger danger or the increased business and recklessness on our roads, I think that articles which try to make parent's feel stupid for not understanding the real levels of risk are unkind.  The risk may be smaller of a child being hit by a car as a pedestrian than the risk of them being involved in an accident while riding in a car, but it is counterintuitive to us that they are not safer while cocooned in a car under our watchful eye, so we are unable to process an appropriate perception of the real risk.  To poo poo that is to mock our fundamental nature. 

The only solution I can suggest is to get outside WITH your children as often as possible from an early age, so that when you decide they are old enough to go out by themselves they are in possession of enough experience of crossing roads and climbing trees with your guidance that they reduce their chances of doing something really silly when they are in charge of their own actions.  This is what my folks did, and we spent most of our childhood out on our bikes exploring the redways and play parks of Milton Keynes.  I may have been dissatisfied at the time with the lack of 'real' freedom and the way it isolated me from my peers, but each generation does what it feels is best to care for their own most precious children.


I don't know what ages my boys will be when they're allowed out alone, I guess it will depend on circumstances and where we're living at the time.  In the meantime, while they're so little I am bucking the trend of my neighbourhood of allowing them to join the small packs of very sweet but quite feral children that roam the estate.  I may have been impressed by the vocabulary of the youngster who told us to 'stay away from that girl she's addicted to fornication' but I'd rather avoid that future for my kids if I can.

The risk then of abduction, squashing, falling from trees or learning to swear like a well travelled sailor are real, but what of the risks of staying indoors?  These have been well documented, including potential links to increased childhood obesity and associated health problems, hyperactivity, poor attention spans, poor concentration, weaker muscles and bones, reduced digestive health from inactivity, increased allergies from lack of exposure to dirt, even some suggestions of an increase in poor eyesight.  These are correlative conditions rather than a definite cause and effect relationship, but the evidence does seem to be trending towards the obvious 'spend lots of time outside in a natural or semi-natural environment, good, spend lots of time indoors glued to a screen, bad'. 


What did we gain from our trip to the play park today?  I put my back out again last week, so our trips to the local play park have involved a much less hands-on approach from me.  Instead of climbing up the steep hill of the slide hanging on to Toby while Ollie whizzed round and round overtaking us repeatedly, I put Ollie in charge.  He was only allowed to play on the big hill slide if he helped Toby up each time.  My heart was in my mouth the first few times, with images of Toby getting a smashed head on the boulders or breaking his neck rolling off the top awkwardly. 

Ollie took his responsibility well (with a fair bit of encouragement to start with to keep him behind Toby up the slope and not just charging past him).  He quickly found they could slide down faster on their bellies, so started loading Toby on to the slide that way round.  When Ollie discovered that sliding down head first on his back made him go too fast so he flew off the end and hurt himself a little, he then took care to flip Toby over back onto his tummy when he tried to copy his big brother in that manoeuvre on the next time round.  They discovered that climbing up the side was quicker than going round the proper route at the back, and that trying to walk up the slide itself was harder.  By helping his little brother, Ollie found that the reward was not just a happy mum, but also more fun than barging past and playing on his own.  Toby gained a lot more turns than if I had been helping him and it was Ollie he turned to each time his boot came off or he got stuck.  Opportunities to build up reliance on each other and to build trust and compassion will hopefully help them to stay great friends into adulthood. The boys gained physical exercise, development of gross motor skills, problem solving skills, teamwork skills.  It is thought that the mental stimulation and low level of stress hormones produced during slightly risky play helps to acclimate the body to stressful situations resulting in children growing into adults who react less adversely to stressful situation.  In addition, this kind of play makes children feel good and increases their sense of self esteem as they conquer challenges.

Yes there are risks from playing outdoors, but there's so much to gain, even if it's just an hour out in the air every day.  Sometimes I get disheartened by the rubbish and the dog muck and the vandalism and I resort to driving them to places that I deem to be less unsanitary such as the indoor play gym, but when you get smiles and sunshine like today it fortifies you to keep going and keep getting outside.