A Day in the Woods with Year 2 Red Class (Hayley)

Before the day in the forest began I was a little bit nervous I was unsure of how being outside would change the way the children behaved as the setting was unusual to them. I was also unsure about what level I was going to be expected to try and teach the children at because I have never worked within a year two class. However, I was extremely excited about getting the chance to put all that we had learned with in the forest into practice and to ensure every child had a fantastic day.



The day started in the brilliant sunshine and with a magical entrance from the Reeve explaining the challenges the day would bring. My nerves were settled almost at once after meeting the class they were all fabulous. Immediately, I could see the excitement in the children’s eyes as they set off on the fairy trail which led them straight to the fire circle. Here I helped with the dying activity by supervising the group crushing berries. Next, they all had to write words to help them later with telling their own stories. During this activity I noticed a little boy was very withdrawn. After sitting down next to him I discovered he was not a confident writer, in order to stop him feeling left out I encouraged him to describe to me some words then asked if he would like to draw them instead.



Throughout the day I also helped out with some shelter building which the kids loved. It gave them the freedom to create their own little dens choosing their own materials so they could eat their lunches inside. It was great to see all of the parents getting involved in some cases I wasn’t sure who was having more fun them or the children. I also helped the children at the end of the day to create their own little fires this was important to ensure the children were all kept safe.



Jess and I chose to show the children how they could cook cakes in orange skins to lead them into talking about irreversible and reversible changes. This was completely different to our original plan which was to cook eggs within the oranges but one of our class mates told us how she had done it with cakes in brownies and we thought the children would enjoy this activity more any might actually taste them. To get the children talking about chemical changes we first asked the children what they thought was in the cake mixture. The next step was to ask them after we had heated the mixture on the fire. Most of the children were able to say that they wouldn’t be able to get the original materials back and some were able to tell me why we used certain ingredients such as self-raising flour to help the cake rise. I also tried to give them examples of things that were reversible such as water to ice but the seamed to find this harder to understand.



Our activity was extremely hands on we asked the children to scrape the insides of the oranges out. Whilst some children really enjoyed getting messy and pulling the insides out others did not. We took a mixed group of boys and girls, which worked really well as the boys helped out the girls with the messy bit that they didn’t want to do. They then mixed up the cake mix and poured it into the orange skins which were then placed on a baking tray onto the fire.



During our activity we did have a few problems some of which we were able to address along the way. The 1^st problem that we noticed was we were filling the orange skins too much so the cakes were rising and spilling out onto the tray. We also notices some of the cakes were still soggy after coming off the fire, this was addressed by ensuring the last group to scoop out their oranges took all of the insides out leaving no residue. Looking back on the activity we needed a practice run ourselves so we could have addressed these problems earlier. I also noticed some of the children found scooping out the oranges hard it may have been an idea to first cut round the orange skins to make it simpler for them. I would not have pre-scooped the oranges to as the children really enjoyed the chance to get messy. Overall, I feel our activity went well as all the children appeared to have fun and learn a little about the science behind the irreversible changes occurring in front of their eyes. I would definitely take classes out for a day of science in the woods again!