Forest school

To encourage bird life in our Forest School, the children make food for the birds. This week, the delicacy was created by mixing seeds, mashing a banana, and combining those ingredients into a paste that can be hung on one of the trees. Needless to say, the first bird to tuck in was the resident robin. People think robins are friendly, but they are actually fanatically territorial; this one probably thought the best way of removing the incursion from its patch was to eat it.

The children were transfixed, calling the teachers to join them in observing the little bird.

Then the role-play took over: two girls, one immediately behind the other, almost like girl and avatar, approached a teacher. The avatar started tweeting.

“Can you hear a bird singing, Miss Kate?”

“Oh, I can! Where is it?”

As Miss Kate turned to find the bird, the two girls shuffled gently to the side, so the avatar would remain a bird and not be found to be a little girl. Then they swapped roles saying “Don’t let them see you” before enticing a second teacher to witness the bird song, all the time shifting and swaying so the bird remained audible but invisible.