Kilninver Forest School

At forest schools there was a fire. The fire went pop, crack, boom. It was safe because we put out big blocks of wood. We made chocolate bananas.

The children listened and participated incredibly well this week. They went off on their own and could tell me all of the safety precautions they had worked out for themselves (e.g. hang on with hands and feet when tree climbing so that if one set of limbs slips you have a back up). Sob…., I’m not really needed anymore.

At forest schools we toasted bananas on the fire. The bananas were scrumptious. When they were toasting we went down to play army games. Hardie was against us and we had to defeat him.

We took the hazel trees that we had cut down and used the Billy Hook to cut off the extra branches. Because it didn’t have any extra branches and it was nice & straight and quite strong it would be really good for the banisters across the river. We had to stand facing the left and we held the BillyHook with one hand . It was quite hard to cut the bits off because they were quite thick .

I found it hard to saw because if you sort of loose your concentration the blade comes out of the groove and it is hard to get it back in. All the other branches kept getting in the way so I had to do little fast cuts and just move the saw a wee bit.
We were cutting the hazel because it grows back lots of times and it was long and straight so it would be good for our rail.

I had to cut the extra branches off with a very sharp knife. It looks like a hook and it is called a BillyHook. You hold it in your writing hand and swing it behind you to chop the wee twigs off. You have to hold it tight or you will drop it.

I found it hard to saw the tree down because my saw kept jumping and it was quite stiff. When the trunk fell down it was quite big so I had to take a few big steps back . It was very heavy and hard to pull. I didn’t like the hat because it was very tight to begin with. I had to loosen it up so that it would fit properly. Lots of people helped to pull it along and they were very helpful. We did a risk assessment of the site before we began and gave it a score of 5 because of all the hazards. We were extra careful because if this and so everything went well.
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Ross showed us how to cut down trees. We all had a go and everyone had to stand back in case they got hit when the tree fell down. We helped each other to take the tree trunks up to Ross. This was fun but it was quite hard I didn’t think it was going to be so hard. I was surprised that I managed to cut it down and I wish we could all have cut a few more down because it was fun.

We were cutting down branches from a hazel tree. We were going to use them to make handrail across the burn. It was harder than it looked because the saw blade kept on coming out of the cut that I had made.

Once we had cut down the branch we had to pull it up to the track to where the other group were cutting the branches off with a BillyHook. We had to make the last cut diagonal so that the rain won’t lie on the cut branch and make it rot. Then we put mud on it to make sure it wouldn’t rot definitely.

jack sawing

Rory – At the end of forest schools we were very muddy. So we were in the bin bags to keep the inside of the car clean. It was great fun because me and Imogen were making huge holes in the bin bags and Meghan was talking to Caroline she said the babies are making lots of holes. When we got back to school we took them off ourselves and they were all holey. We were trying to do a sack race in the carpark but it was very hard and we were laughing . Miss McMillan calls us her Bin Bag Babies.

Imogen – Rory and me were in the bin bags because we were all muddy. I was making holes with him. Meghan was laughing and telling us to stop.