Forest School Perry Hall Park 2023
Since February this year our ever popular family forest school sessions have continued thanks to funding from Awards for All from the National Lottery. The sessions are run by Forest School practitioner Eleanor Hoad and children of all ages attend.

This year the focus has been on family feasts. The children love to prepare, cook and of course eat food cooked on the fire together. Children learn how to safely light and take care of a fire, improve their chopping skills and learn new recipes. Everyone agrees that food cooked outside on the fire always tastes better!

Everything is cooked from scratch and is vegan, healthy and nutritious. Favourite recipes include Chana Masala and Chapatis, toasted Cinnamon Apples, Chocolate Orange Cakes, Autumn Vegetable Soup, Potato Nom Noms, (invented by the children!), Plum and Peach sponge (yes you can even cook cakes on a fire!) Raspberry Ice cream and Pancakes.
Learning how to safely forage for ingredients is also part of our cooking programme, we drilled for nutritious birch sap in early spring, picked elderflowers in the summer and made our own cordial, then returned to the elder in the autumn, picking elderberries and combining them with foraged hawthorn berries, apples and blackberries to make a warming and nourishing autumn hedgerow drink that tastes delicious but is also medicinal, fighting off viruses and topping up our vitamin C.

Not forgetting our love of environmental art, we have also explored making our own natural paints this year, creating pigments from plants, soils and rocks and experimented with painting beautiful textured pictures outside. We have enjoyed hapa zome printing with plants on cloth and made giant bubble wands and homemade bubble mix.

The session activities are planned based on the interests and ideas of the children and they have total autonomy in deciding what they want to join in with, they are always free to play, explore or try something else. This flexibility and freedom is so important for our young people.

We love working with green wood for crafts or structures. So far this year we have used green hazel poles to build dens, ladders, climbing structures and stargazer chairs.

Our whittling skills have improved carving wooden mushrooms, rabbits and making butter knives. Our next big project is going to be working with a shave horse, a traditional combination of vice and workbench, used for green woodworking, usually with a draw knife for carving and shaping. We can’t wait to see what the children make together.

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Forest School Handsworth Park 2019
Throughout 2019 weekly Forest School sessions have been run in Handsworth Park by Crafting Community, led by  qualified Forest School practitioner Eleanor Hoad and supported by  National Lottery Awards For All Community Funding.

Sessions have included foraging  , den building, fire making, nature art, maze designing, nest building, stories, ladder making, bubble wands, knot tying, scavenger hunts, Hapa Zome (printing plants onto fabric) birds, plant, & tree identification , story telling, fire making, & much much more!

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We are happy to report that after our first year of Forest School supported by Awards For All Community Funding, the sessions will continue on for the next year with support from Active Parks Wellbeing Society.