It was another action packed forest school, and today it was all about Native Americans. We started with a brief chat about their lifestyles and habits. When asked what they might have eaten, twin 2 was very confident and shouted very loudly, “fish fingers!!”. I’m not so convinced myself 😉 After that we practised our tracking skills, each following a wild set of (printed) footprints that led to an animal they would have caught to cook and eat (I’m wondering if following laminated rats tracks count as “track a wild animal” for the National Trust’s 50 things list!). 
Then it was time to get busy turning ourselves into some Native Americans. First we needed some shelter, so in our teams we set off to make a teepee, with what was on the forest floor, plus a waterproof sheet. Next were some colourful head dress. A band of corrugated cardboard with bright colourful feathers inserted into the holes, was simple and effective. Weapons were needed to hunt with, so an arrow was fashioned from a hazel twig with an elastic band holding feathers onto the end, and a groove cut to place it onto the bow. The bows were hazel twigs placed under tension with string threaded through holes at either end and pulled tight.
They had some fun trying to learn to fire the bows and arrows, which actually fired really well with some coordination. Our last activity was to make a mini totem pole each, which could be as intricate as you wanted (little lady’s) or not (mini men!). All this involved hammers, nails, glue, and pens etc. A lot of skills were used in today’s session and my trio loved their introduction to Native Americans, learning all about them, and it is not a lesson they will forget for a while (subliminal learning at its best!). They were chasing each other round the woods firing their bows and arrows and pretending to be Indians for quite a while 🙂
