Well, so lovely this morning I took my P7s outside to have 30 mins free play in the woods! Interesting to see what they chose to do.
Some girls climbed onto some think bendy and bouncy branches and bounced up and down while chatting to their friends. Others went to the spot they did some shelter building and mapping in a couple of weeks ago - interesting they felt an affinity for the place they explored recently.
A mixed group sat round a "pretend" camp fire made of sticks and stones (they had made this after putting up their tarp shelter a couple of weeks ago) and chatted.
A group of boys looked under stones for minibeasts and found a metal fence wire which they excavated to find out how long it was (5m!).
One girl wanted to climb as many trees as possible. As they beech trees are aorund 100 years old they are easy to climb up around 1.5m up where most have a platform where they divide into 2 or 3 trunks. She spent the whole session doing this on her own, quite happily, despite usually being very social.
One final group of boys were using a branch as a "trampoline" and throwing small sticks around. They tried to hit a tree trunk with their sticks and eventually used a bendy stick as a kind of catapult. There was good team work as one bent the branch back and released as another dropped a stick just as the branch sprung up and then flew across to the target.
What was great was how safety conscious they all were and no one was silly with the sticks or wire.
The main thing I noticed were all the happy faces.