Quest in Fire Wood (PART 2) - Vicky

Quest in Fire Wood PART 2 (March 19^th 2012) – Vicky Mitchell

Maggie and I with the help of our peers took the children on a quest to build shelters for them to sit and eat their lunch in. Red class were in their element finding, carrying and erecting the wooden branches used to construct the shelters.

Here are some of the fabulous finished shelters Red class constructed:

 

After lunch we toasted marshmallows and put them between chocolate digestive biscuits, delicious. The children absolutely loved making these and so did the adults! Marshmallow toasting generated some interesting questions from the year 2’s, such as, ‘why are the marshmallows bubbling?’ For the answer check out Gillian’s post on the blog which answers this question and many others you might have about the science behind toasting marshmallows. 

Hayley and Jess experimented with making cakes using ‘orange peel’ in place of a cake tin on the fire whilst Zoe made popcorn.

For the penultimate activity the groups created their own stories of their magical quest in the forest whilst the activity leaders scribed the stories using the charcoal the children had earlier made. 

Finally and probably the most exciting part of the whole day for the children (apart from toasting the marshmallows of course), the children took part in the ‘Circle of fire.’ Kneeling in a circle the children were given the freedom (under guided supervision) to make their own mini fires in escalope shells, using kindling they had sourced from home and using ‘troll bogies’ and ‘fairy blankets’ they found in the forest!

There was one particular aim we set ourselves for the whole day, and that was to get one child to say that was,

‘The bestest day in the whole world ever!’

One boy aged 7 did indeed utter those very words, making our ‘Quest in Fire Wood’ an awesome success for all those who took part!