“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August”  Jenny Han

What a summer of magic it has been;  the days were long, the sun shone and we had a full programme of forest school and outdoor play happening across Yorkshire. The long hot summer brought all the generations outdoors to summer events and it was great to meet so many of our existing clients and make new ones at our stand at the Great Yorkshire Show in July.  When our term time programmes in Bradford and Dewsbury came to an end, we switched straight over to the holiday schedule and were busy all summer long with our popular holiday forest schools and community programmes.

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“The grass grew green again and the woods were full of wild flowers”  The Little House on the Prairie

After a long wet winter, the sun came out in early May and it has barely stopped shining since, making our late spring programmes feel like one long summer.  Those muddy sessions of the last 2 blogs seem like a distant memory as we have enjoyed active and lazy days outside in the sunshine.

With our new practitioners Sam and Lizzie in place, the Forest School Play Project began in May, the start of a 3 year programme of outdoor learning and play with young children in inner city Bradford.  (more…)

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt”  Margaret Atwood

In my previous blog post I wrote of mud and ice, and how we were looking forward to spring.  Two months later and we feel like we’re only just getting there.  The Beast from the East and weeks more rain meant that our Easter holiday forest schools were some of the muddiest on record.  But as our photos posted on our Facebook page show, our forest schoolers are a hardy bunch and took it all in their stride with lots of creative muddy play.  I love this tweet from one of our freelance practitioners, Ruth McBain … (more…)

“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get”  Mark Twain

Rain, mud, ice and snow: the thing about the early months of the year is there is an awful lot of weather about.  From heavy rain to snow showers and strong winds, hardly a week has gone by in the last couple of months when our outdoor sessions have not affected by some kind of inclement weather.  But it hasn’t stopped us and our hardy participants from getting out more and in this, and all our blog posts this year, we’ll be catching up each month with the photos and feedback from our various projects. (more…)

Unlike on my other Wild Encounter experiences this year, there was no problem spotting my final subject.  They were spread out along the beach in their thousands, their haunting calls carrying over the dunes before I could even see them.  Although normally at home out at sea, in November and December huge numbers of grey seal come to the mainland to give birth and breed.  It’s a spectacular sight which can be witnessed at a handful of sites along the east coast. (more…)