It has been a long few months and it seems about the time to get on with life now. We've been busy getting on with being back at work and managing our small people's changed logistics and patterns and rhythms of life. Guidance of restrictions is changing and we've managed to catch up with friends ad family, albeit over the garden gate and without at the big squeezes that we'd all really like.
The summer holidays are rapidly approaching, just as the summer weather seems to have drifted off into cloudy skies. The prospect of this years summer is mightily changed from that of any other. No trips away with friends and mini adventures with family are planned, but we are planning on keeping ourselves busy in other ways. Work still goes on for us grown ups and the small people in our lives still need access to their work: 'PLAY'.
So come the 27th July, we are running sessions for the small ones to come and play and learn in the woods. We are opening Monday-Thursdays for sessions from 9.30am-2.30pm. We are welcoming small groups of children for all the usual exploration, freedom, adventure making and creating in Sawpit woods.
As Forest School trained practitioners we have always been masters of Risk Benefit analysis. So we've used our risk assessing skill (along with copious amounts of Government guidance) to ensure that our sessions are designed to mitigate as much the risk of COVID-19 as possible. We will still make fires, but not cook shared food- just heat and toast our own which we have brought for lunch. We will still swing and climb, just not in our lovely fabric hammocks for the time being. We will create and make with the plentiful natural resources to hand. We will just ensure that as we are doing this, we are ensuring we keep our hands super clean by using our hand made, hazel framed tippy tap hand washing system. We will clean our tools regularly and are lucky enough to have enough of them to all use separately to minimise sharing. We have a gorgeous open space which already minimises spreading risks, but we can space out our logs, so we are not getting too close for too long when we are sitting for a munch or a witter. We will continue to discuss risk and encourage good 'respiratory hygiene', by catching and binning any sneezes and tissues (especially for all those hay fever sufferers out there). In fact we'll be doing all the things we usually do and love and whilst continuing to ensure we are being as safe and healthy as we can be in mind, body and spirit.
The huge range of benefits of being outside in nature are well documented, so we are excited to be able to give that provision to all throughout the summer and at a time when many children have had a different access to play and learning that they might have had in a 'traditional' year.
Please get in contact to sawpitwoods@gmail.com if you would like to book a space for your children.