Birch Forest Schools

As part of National Nest Box Week, organised each year by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Birch Forest Schools ran two nest box making days on behalf of Red Rose Forest. The first on 14th February took place at Nutsford Vale in Gorton, Manchester and the second today at the Meadows site, Salford.

The Vale event was attended by ladies of the “Friends of” group who came out in weather that stayed dry but was quite chilly. They showed remarkable skill in making their boxes, choosing from open fronted or small hole entrance style. The session was marked by a lot of laughing and banter and only the lightest touch was required to make things run smoothly with “what to do” rather than “how to do it” being the norm.

Once the boxes were built, I gamely climbed trees to secure them, choosing wire rather than fixings. The joy in the group was palpable and I fully expect that these boxes will be monitored daily and with great expectation of occupancy in the near future.

Today’s session was all about families. Some of the children were recognisable from our work with The Friars school though this time siblings and parents came along.

Once again the children impressed us with their skill in making. They worked well and safely with tools and carried out a range of tasks including measuring and marking, sawing and nailing. As with the Vale group, they chose to make both types of box and were very excited to see them put into the trees around the Meadows.

If one were to cost out each box, it they would compare less than favourably with ready made boxes from any major DIY store but then the point of the exercise was not to make the boxes as cheaply as possible. On completion of their boxes, the Nutsford Vale group felt confident enough to be able to run the activity themselves at future Vale open days.

The children working on the Meadows used hand saws for the first time, used measuring to mark out their plans, made decisions as to the type of box they would make and where it would be sited, worked together to support each other in using tools.

There were families from different ethnic groups, one of which had only been in the UK for three months, all with young children, some in pushchairs. All of them braved the cold windy weather to engage with their local outdoor space and to work as a community for the betterment of the space. This is something which cannot be bought off of the shelf and is the essence of Community Engagement

Having reread last months blog entry, my comments on the low temperature seemed almost laughable. This month when we arrived on-site, the temperature was minus 5 and falling and throughout the week stayed in the minus, bottoming out somewhere around minus 10. Only during the last few hours of Sunday did the temperature get above zero, positively tropical.

This was a week of revision and test with assessments in winter twig ID, mammal sign and water finding and purification on the timetable as well as four peer presentations and two days of sourcing our own water from streams etc, filtering it and purifying it. Even with the extra work involved in finding, filtering and heating the water, the Friday night shower club still managed to run with showers in the snow being possibly the speediest so far.

Despite water freezing in the wash basins, every item of cookware sticking to surfaces with frost and ice forming in water bottles as we held them, all activities went ahead as planned.

Highlight of the week for me was waking on Thursday morning to find the woods covered in several inches of snow. All through the camp were tracks, bird and mammal telling the stories of their night time wanderings. Following a speedy breakfast, Dave and I banked the fires and set off just after dawn. For almost two hours we tracked fox, badger, squirrel and rabbit. We saw deer tracks, pheasant and numerous small rodents. In the pristine snow it was possible to see the gait laid out before us, the foxes rotary gallop as he sped up about his business. Trails by badger, ponderous his belly dragging through the snow and a squirrel, scratching through the white looking for a cache before bounding onto a tree limb and leaving droppings.

There were excellent presentations by course attendees, some of which I feel I could replicate alongside my own activities, and at the end of the week, our first plant walk. Spring greens and how to tell the difference between young foxglove and primrose. All exciting stuff and the first of many forays into the world of plants.

The assignment for this month is a big one. We are given an area of the wood and have to survey it and create a five year management plan. ON the plus side, feedback on work handed in this month was good, now if I could just finishing that bow…

At last the group from Firars school were able to take part in their activities without danger of freezing where they stood. Despite the day being grey, it was reasonably warm and dry. In response to requests by children, the session hinged around a story.

Following the set up routines, during which both groups, year 1 and 2, exhibit their own unique approaches to things, I recounted the tale of how the dragonfly became, setting the story in the Meadows even further back in time than the Dragon story. At the end of the story a dragonfly is made from all sorts of odds and ends then is brought to life by wand waving children.

When I have planned out a session, resourced any possible activities either with imported materials or natural resources, it is gratifying to have a voice in the crowd shout out “can we make one of those”

” well I expect you can”  I might reply as I congratulate myself on a job well done.

Am I manipulating their desires? Possibly, but gently and their activities and explorations are no less valid for it. While many children created wonderful creatures, some from the natural world, some from imagination, one or two were happy to rub the soft sticky modelling material through their fingers, mix it with soil, rub it on trees. In some ways, these were the most interesting and I watched avidly as they played to their own tune.

The past three sessions at Falstone have been dedicated to making shavehorses. The women on the course have developed their skills quickly and felt able to tackle a bigger task which would enable them to have their own shavehorse to work on. As the construction of the shavehorse includes many of the skills learnt making the reindeer their confidence is high!
The sessions so far have included using a bowsaw to cut wood to length, a drawknife to peel bark and carve the legs and the axe to carve the body of the shavehorse. The women are also doing small projects to fill in time.. so far we have made a rounders bat, a bowl, a giant spoon and some carved shapes.
These sessions are also about the friendships and social interaction for women with young children living in an isolated rural area like Kielder and Falstone. The group has gelled well and plans for future projects are on the way.

Birch Forest Schools was invited to take part in “Pennington Flash’s Big Bird Watch” at the weekend.

Taking along the big bell tent complete with wood burner, we ran drop in activities with a bird theme including willow weaving and mobile making.

Despite a cold and damp day, attendees were pleased to find an event on their doorstep and to take part in a range of activities.

This was the second family session run at Crow Lane, the first being at the beginning of last Summer.

It was gratifying to see faces of children and their parents returning to take place for the second time and to meet new families. Though the day was cold, it was bright and not too windy.

The theme for the day was Native Americans with the story of the White Deer, tipi making and native painting with natural dyes taking place. I took along the atlatl’s and a set of darts and once the children had taken turns, the adults engaged in an impromptu target shooting competition.

Despite approaching the session with trepidation following a week of illness, the session turned out to be one of those golden ones that leaves you feeling refreshed, excited and as though you have contributed to something good and worthwhile.

Over the course of three days and four sessions, two classes from Chapel Street Primary in Gorton were taken to Nutsford Vale to take part in the dragon of the woods story then an in class activity based on the story was delivered.
The Dragon of the woods has been a mainstay of the Birch Forest Schools offering for some time and is constantly evolving to take on new ideas and springboard new activities. This was the first time that the story had been taken indoors.

The school had asked for a multimedia project with an outdoor element to be carried out over two half days for two classes, quite a tall order which required speedy delivery and a lot of preparation of resources especially for the indoor phase of the activity.

By building templates for scenery elements, it was possible to get groups of the children to recreate scenes from the story, with their own twist, in puppet show format. The children then retold the story in their own way.

The children did admirable work and the project tied in nicely with their current “Traditional Tales” theme.

The second day on the Meadows for the two early years groups was a warmer one. That said, Salford threw down a lot of rain and once again the warm tent came into its own.

With both the morning and afternoon groups being familiar with us and the routines, the days sessions went smoothly with both groups engaging fully in building mini shelters. They exhibited a wide range of ideas and explored fantasy playscapes with their baby dragons.

Some children even found an egg which they assured me was a dragon egg!

This was the type of session that could have run on and on past the allocated time for the groups.

The first session of the new year took place on the Meadows in Salford today.

Two full classes, year 2 in the morning and year 1 in the afternoon came along for the first time. The day coincided with the coldest weather for some time with thick frost on the ground and sub zero temperatures throughout the day.

The severe cold meant that some children in the morning group became quite uncomfortable so part way through the story, we retired to the tent to get warm and have a hot drink.

This was the first outing for the bell tent and stove as a warm shelter and we were extremely glad that we had set it up. In a matter of minutes the children were warmed enough to start removing coats. Wellies were removed and toes stretched towards the stove. After the break, the children were happy to take part outdoors once again.

For our part, it became obvious that the usual meet, greet and housekeep routines need to be adapted to prevailing conditions and activities need to be flexible enough to cope with changes in circumstances.

The first course week of 2011 was the coldest yet. Though the week started reasonably mild with clear, starry, moon lit nights, by the weekend the temperatures dropped into the minuses, the wash water froze in the bowls and stayed frozen all day and thick frost lay everywhere. This naturally coincided with shelter based activities during which several sizes of debris shelter were constructed and attendees took turns to spend the night in them.

With just one other person and a roaring fire for company, the group shelter was warm and comfortable though I doubt that our construction would have been particularly water tight had it rained. Looking at other shelter types involving tarps and the group making a bender/wigwam also took place.

The activity which gripped most of the attendees was the field butchery session. A small roe deer was brought to the camp ready gralloched and Nick took us through the procedure for skinning and butchering the carcass to extract the best cuts. This gave all of us a deep respect for the animal and the resources it was providing to the group.

On the final day, I finally got my hands on a sizeable chunk of flint. Under Nicks tutelage, we were shown how to pick the best spot to break open the nodule, how to tell good flint and how to prepare the striking platform to make out microliths. Despite the cold and kneeling on the ground for hours, this was a fascinating activity and while it seemed at times that one’s primary activity seemed to be making small rocks out of one big one, bit by bit progress took place until I was happy to take away a bag of razor sharp shards tinkling like new minted coins.
These shards will form the points on the end of handmade arrows made from straightened dogwood and fletched with stiff turkey feathers.

There was ample opportunity to see a range of tracks in the mud around the camp and I was gratified to feel as though I had improved in my ability to tell one track from another and the story of what might have happened.
The assignment for this month is to write up backwoods cooking but with three assessments taking place next month, I suspect that this may be a no show for me.

Our new member joined us replacing Tom who had to leave the course on unexpectedly. While it is good to welcome new people, we all missed Tom and raised an imaginary glass to him in his absence.