The International Year of the Forest

Celebrating the International Year of the Forest with a John Muir Award Taster day at Blaen Bran Community Woodland.

On Wednesday 5th October intrepid explorers from Garnteg Primary school were welcomed by Cyfleon to experience a day in the woodlands to take part in a Taster day for the John Muir Award. The day was sponsored by the Forestry Commission through the Torfaen FEI group to celebrate the international year of the Forest.

Our Journey started with some fun and games to introduce ourselves and build trust and positive relationships. The children with their wonderful imaginations and even better memories for names, animals and their actions we started the day in excellent spirit. This was soon followed by a game to introduce John Muir and his love for nature and adventure. With a day of exploring ahead of us we headed deeper into the woods to Discover and Explore its secrets.

One child found an imaginative way off guessing an age of a tree by seeing how many children were needed to hug it. Simply put, the more hugs a tree needed the older the tree! After exploring the wonderful colours that Autumn has given us we began a hunt for some of the inhabitants of the woods and discussed the positive steps we can take to improve the habitats of the species we found. Luckily after finding a lot of slugs we managed to see some birds and even some cones nibbled and left over from a squirrels lunch.

This led us nicely to our very own lunch break at our log circle with a campfire ready and waiting for us by one of our volunteers 'Uncle Pete'. With a fire warming our toes and sandwiches eaten it was time for a little reward for the hard work of the morning session. In true Forest School fashion we broke out the popcorn and marshmallows.

With happy tummies we pressed on with a John Muir Orienteering trail challenge. With our group in two teams and the challenge set, an expedition was launched to find markers with the clues needed to solve the mystery of the trail. With John Muir safely found and a tale from one of his life long adventures, it was that time to break camp to head back to the school bus.

With a great day finished we received the greatest compliment we could ever have hoped for, members of the group told us that "it was the best school trip ever". We would like to thank all the children of class 4 from Brynteg Primary school and their teachers for taking a day from their busy curriculum to experience this session.

We hope to see you all soon to complete the full award with us.
Enquires on the John Muir Award with CYFLEON
 visit http://www.cyfleon.co.uk/ or contact us: cyfleonltd@hotmail.co.uk