Home Ed Forest School, Team Retreats & Meeting Room in Private Woodland in Small Dole, West Sussex.

Our theme this week in our Home Ed groups was ‘Beavers are back!’🦫. We learned why they had disappeared in the UK and why they’re are an important keystone species in managing and cleaning our waterways, storing water during droughts and creating aquatic habits for other wildlife. We’re so happy these interesting animals are being introduced back in to the wild!

We also learned fascinating facts about them …. Did you know they have transparent eyelids so they can see underwater?

The younger group members worked brilliantly together to build an amazing dam that held strong even when a storm came! ⛈️ Some older group members made amazing felted Beavers too.

I didn’t take many photos this week in our home Ed groups, mainly because I didn’t want to drop my phone in mud! It has been a wet week but it hasn’t stopped us having fun in the woods.

We’ve been learning about how fossils are made, examining some real fossils, hunting for fossils in the woods, carefully cracking open some rocks and making clay fossils imprints.

The children have totally embraced the extra water and mud in the woods. They’ve been jumping in muddy puddles, paddling in the newly formed streams and building bridges.

An exciting discovery was also made! I’m not pretending to be an expert on this (this is based on basic internet research) but we think we found a slime mould! (See pic). We think it might be alive, feeding and moving. Slime moulds are an enormous single cell that moves by slowly pulsing its body, pushing fluid back and forth , about a millimetre per second! Fascinating 🙂

This week we celebrated the Winter solstice by finding ‘The Lightbringers’ in the dark places @andthehare

We also made Soltice Lanterns, ate mince pies and toasted chocolate stars over the fire. What a great way to end the year. I’m looking forward to spending more time with our lovely families in 2026! Happy Winter Solstice everyone! 🔥 ❄️

This week we got the tools out to make natural Christmas trees 🌲 The Home Ed children (and their grown ups) used saws and palm drills to create beautiful gifts. We also toasted Panettone over the fire and it was very tasty. We’re all feeling festive now.

This week in the woods we’ve planted a young Pine tree and decorated it with edible decorations for the wildlife. We’ve even set up a camera trap to see which wildlife will feast on these treats. This activity was inspired by the beautiful story ‘The Night Tree.’

The children helped to plant and name the tree. As a group we voted for the best name ideas. Meet Bruce Mr Chicken McNugget the Spruce!🌲

This week in Home Ed Forest Club we’ve been learning about leaves.

We discussed how a leaf is like a little factory that makes food for trees and plants through the process of photosynthesis. We looked closely at their veins and talked about the similarities with our human bodies.

The children learned to identify some common native leaves through a fun leaf matching game.

We also made Autumn Leaf Globes with tiny trees and tiny leaves 🍁 🍂 🍁

Our campfire snacks were chocolate orange brownies. My photo does not make them look very appealing but they were popular with those who like the infused chocolate orange flavour 🍊

This week at our Home Ed sessions we’ve been learning about ‘Homes in the Wild’.

We’ve discussed habitats and how they contain everything that an animal needs to survive. We’ve grouped animals in to different habitats and made our own Diorama habitats for our chosen animals. We had grasslands, savannahs, mangrove swamps, deserts, tropical rainforests, bamboo forests and woodlands! These habitats were made with food and water sources. There were also places for the animals to sleep and shelter or camouflage from predators. The children demonstrated amazing focus and attention to detail in making their animal’s habitat.

This week we continued with learning about fascinating fungi and found some excellent examples in our woods! We even used the amazing King Alfred Cakes fungi to start our fire 🔥 We then got baking and made some beautiful Fly Agaric biscuits in the Dutch Oven. (Just to be clear no actual Fly Agarics were used in our recipe! We used icing sugar and jam to decorate 🍄)

We’ve had a lovely week in the woods with our Home Ed groups. We’ve searched for Fungi, studied them closely and created our own from clay 🍄 We’ve learned how the Fly Agaric (toadstool) gets its spots and discussed how and why fungi release their spores. We also cooked apples with cinnamon over the fire 🔥 I love this time of year!

This week was all about spiders 🕷️Not everyone was fan of these fascinating creatures but we shared interesting facts about them and appreciated why they are important. We admired their webs and made our own webs using wool and hazel wood. We also made some conker spiders to go in them and completed a rope spider web challenge! 🕸️

Another lovely week in the woods with our home Ed groups. This week we talked about how the change of seasons give cues to birds that it’s time to start thinking about migrating. In our Migration game we had to fly South whilst facing the challenges of flying over mountains, through storms and having to stop at the lakes to feed. Unfortunately there were predators waiting for us, so we had to stick together as a flock to confuse them in order to survive! We made it all the way to the southern hemisphere and Springtime! Then we had to go all the way back a few months later! 😂 All the children agreed that it was hard work migrating so we sat down and toasted chorizo, cheese and crumpets over the fire. The children got creative making clay birds and bowls to hold crushed nuts and acorns for a “Squirrel Salad” 🐿️

This week at Forest Club our Home Ed groups have been discussing tree seeds inspired by the ‘Mast Year.’ This term describes the bumper crop of acorns we have discovered on the woodland floor. This happens every few years and some of the children had brilliant opinions on why. We also learned that by dropping lots at the same time, the acorn eating predators are overwhelmed ensuring some little oak saplings survive. Nature is so clever! We competed over who could find the biggest and smallest acorns. We also made some cinnamon bun pastries in the Dutch oven.

We also had a session inspired by ‘The Bug Collector’ book by Alex Griffiths. This story is about a boy who loves to catch and collect bugs in jars. However, he soon realises that bugs have important jobs to do! We discussed that whilst it is ok to carefully catch them briefly to learn about them, bugs are best being free to get on with their important jobs. We then did some activities to help the mini-beasts such as restoring our bug hotel and making a butterfly feeder. 🦋

We also celebrated the children’s achievements by making and eating campfire cones and awarding certificates. Me and the forest are taking a few weeks off to rest but look forward to welcoming everyone back in September!

We also said goodbye to our lovely volunteer Carrie and wished her luck in her new job! Thank you Carrie you’ve been amazing! ⭐ Carrie also made bug cakes! 😋

We’ve had a lovely last week of term in the woods with our Home-Ed Forest Club groups.

We’ve had shelter, fire and cooking survival challenges. The children really stepped up to the challenges by using all their skills completely independently. They all agreed that they would definitely survive in the woods without grown ups! 😂

We also acknowledged the skills that the children had developed and the unique qualities each individual brings to the sessions by awarding them with certificates.

It’s been lovely to be under the cool canopy of the Oak and Hazel trees this week. Our Home Ed groups love playing with sticks, so we had a stick theme. We followed a stick trail and worked out the code, used tools and knots to make giant bubbles wands and built dens. We have also been discussing our tadpoles as they have not yet turned in to froglets! We think the habitat is not quite right, so we thought about ways to improve it. After clearing some pond weed for oxygenation and providing a little extra food, we are hoping that conditions will be right for them to develop. 🐸

This week at Forest Club we’ve been discussing water. We talked about why the forest needs water, how it stores water and we identified all the different bodies of water on our amazing blue planet! 🌎 The children then made their own mini bodies of water. We had ponds, waterfalls, rivers and moats. The children worked hard to construct and modify their designs so that the water flowed correctly. We then cooked toffee-apples over the fire and some of the children got creative using their own snacks. Sugared blackcurrant, olive, tomato, cheese kebab anyone? 😂

This week in our Home-Ed Forest Club sessions we learned about Bees🐝 I was really impressed by the children’s knowledge and they ended up teaching me some interesting facts! We played a bee game incorporating learning about how bees work together as a team with different roles and how they collect nectar. We also made pine cone bees and planted bee-friendly sunflowers. The children also toasted marshmallows and practiced their firefighting skills.

I don’t always talk about the real child-led learning on here but I thought I would just explain my sessions are not all activities. I absolutely love seeing the children exploring the woods, searching under logs for frogs and bugs, making up their own crazy games with friends and laughing together in the hammock. All important child stuff 🙂

This week the Slow Worms were definitely the stars of the show! The children initially thought they were baby snakes, so we discussed the similarities and differences to snakes. We also talked about their prey, predators, habitat, behaviour and how we can help protect them.

We also talked about the importance of being gentle with them and not handling them too much due to their super defence mechanisms! Detaching their wiggling tail to distract a predator and also doing really smelly poos to deter it!

We also discovered that they are not ‘slow’ and they are not ‘worms.’ What interesting creatures they are!

Over the last couple of weeks in our Home Ed sessions we’ve been learning all about the Elder Tree.

The children have learned how to identify Elder and how to safely forage the Elderflowers. The flowers were made into Fritters and cooked over the fire. They also used its wood to make wooden beads.

We discussed Folklore and legends about the Elder Mother who is said to protect the forest. The children made their own animal and tree spirits using clay and natural resources from the forest floor.

The children were also very excited to discover a toad in the ‘Toad Abode’ we had made last year! This started many discussions around life cycles, the differences and similarities between toads and frogs, camouflage, predators and prey.

For the bug fans of Forest Club: At the woods today we found loads of caterpillars all on one tree covered in webs. They had eaten ALL the leaves. We think they will eventually turn in to Ermin Moths 🐛 Video narrated by my son.

This week our home Ed groups have been developing their teamwork and survival skills by completing the Forest Rescue Challenge!

Picture 1: The Challenge: A robot has crash landed in to the Forest. Work as a team to find the robot and rescue!

The groups did an amazing job using their skills in map reading, tracking, shelter building, fire-starting, cooking, first aid, filtering water and attracting attention for rescue! 🚁

I was very impressed by how the children worked together, shared their ideas and organised themselves doing jobs that needed to be done!

Picture 2: The excitement of waiting for the popcorn to pop!

Picture 1: Hapa Zome butterflies.
Picture 2: Huge webs spun by caterpillars that we found nearby.
Picture 3: The children were very excited to find a frog! 🐸

This week we learned about butterflies, moths and caterpillars. Plenty of caterpillars ‘ballooned’ in for us to observe. (Ballooning is a survival strategy where small, newly hatched caterpillars use silk threads to travel by wind to new locations.)

This week in our Home Ed Forest sessions, we followed some mystery twig arrows leading to a magical mini-world! This inspired the children to use their imaginations to make their own worlds. Ideas included a mini Forest School, a mini campsite, a mini dog world, a mini wrestling ring, a mini hotel, fairy worlds and some amazing mini clay characters! We also cooked cookies and brownies wrapped in Hazel leaves over the fire.
Ps the Bluebells used were found on the floor. The children are all very aware of their protected status.

One of my favourite Forest School sessions!

This week our Home Ed groups have been learning about Bioluminescence. These amazing creatures have the superpower of creating light with their bodies! The children had brilliant theories on why different organisms did this. This topic was sparked by discovering Glowworms in our woods a couple of weeks ago. We even found another one today as well as making our own Glowworm lanterns complete with glow stick bodies. Other fun stuff happened such as an impromptu performance of a butterfly’s lifecycle, bug identification, pond dipping, s’mores dragon and eagle games and children turning in to wolves! 😂

It has been lovely to be back in Foxfire Woods this week. In our Home Ed Forest Clubs we’ve been bug hunting, watching tadpoles, making assault courses, making very fancy shelters, lighting fires, toasting crumpets and running around! We have also made ‘Earth seed bombs’ in a nod to celebrating Earth day this week, an easy way to help our planet 🌍 Hopefully we can grow flowers for our pollinators! 🐝

So many different designs this week for our STEM Egg Drop Challenge. The goal was to build a structure to protect an egg when dropped from height. None of the eggs had been boiled so it got messy! I was so impressed with our Home Ed Clubs. They spent a lot of time gathering natural materials and thinking about ways to cushion and protect their eggs. They used sticks to absorb the shock and parachutes to slow the egg’s fall! The eggs survived a number of drops but most ended up “getting splatted” in the end! The parents/carers also got involved and rose to the challenge! We also toasted Hot Cross buns on the fire and finished with chocolate egg hunts. That’s Spring term finished. Looking forward to returning next term to Bluebells and Froglets!

This week at Home Ed Forest Club we’ve been learning about the Life Cycle of Frogs 🐸 We even found two of the stages currently in our pond. We painted these on rocks and made a lovely habitat for our toy frogspawn, tadpoles, froglets and frogs. We also cooked chocolate cakes in our Dutch oven, carefully caught and released butterflies and played numerous fun rope games!

Spring has sprung in Foxfire wood! 🌺 On the first day of Spring I can hear woodpeckers pecking, see flowers opening and our tadpoles (which we thought had died) have started to move 😊 I think they were just waiting for a nice warm day.

This week at Home Ed Forest Clubs we’ve been Bonkers about Beetles! 🪲

We found real beetles in the woods which then inspired our clay models. We even found a beautiful gold one!

We’ve been learning survival skills this week at Home Ed Forest Club. It’s been amazing watching the children work as a team, problem solve and negotiate to get their shelters built, fires lit and toffee apples cooked. One group went all ‘Bear Grylls’ and got camouflaged using mud and moss to blend in to their surroundings and another group spent time setting up a brilliant camp to sleep in.

This week at our Home Ed sessions we’ve been discussing birds, nest building and made a giant nest. We also been making mud pancakes in the mud kitchen and edible pink/blue/purple pancakes over the fire.

We also played a messy game of Mud Splat!

I haven’t taken many photos this week in our Home Ed sessions but the children have been very busy making Spinning Tops out of hazel. They used a number of different tools and drew patterns on them that created optical illusions when spun. I was particularly impressed by the perseverance and determination all the children demonstrated in finishing their toys…even in the very heavy rain! 🌧️

We also spotted lots of wildlife this week including fox, deer and best of all…we discovered frogspawn in our pond! We can’t wait to watch them develop 🐸

At Home Ed Forest Club this week we’ve been investigating the pond to see which creatures live there in Winter. We will compare our results in a few weeks when Spring arrives. We also made boats made of only natural materials (and a little twine) to see if they could float on the pond. The children thought carefully about their designs, the size of their sales and materials. Then we tested them out with tiny clay passengers (a person, a cat and two puppies) to see if they survived the crossing!

At Home Ed Forest Club we made Wormeries using layers of sand and soil topped with dead leaves. Then we did a spot of ‘Worm Charming’ and added some worms to them. We left them in a dark shed to allow the worms to do their magic. Tomorrow we will see what has happened and discuss our findings! 🪱

This week in Forest Club we celebrated the Chinese New Year by hanging lucky red wishes on the wishing tree, eating noodles with chopsticks and playing dragon games. Happy Chinese New Year!

This week at Forest Club we've been discussing how people from the Stone Age lived. We also crushed natural materials such as chalk, charcoal and mud to create art inspired by our ancestors. Scenes (with amazing backstories) included hunting woolly mammoths, being hunted by sabre tooth tigers, mythical beasts, ancient trees and a skateboarding dinosaur! We also made campfire s'mores and played an exhausting game of grown-ups versus kids stuck in the mud! 😂

This week in Home Ed Forest Club we have been learning about Snow. The real snow arrived a couple of hours later but we still had fun making fake snow, making edible cinnamon snowflakes over the fire and learning all about 'Snowflake Bentley.' He was the first person to photograph snowflakes under the microscope to discover that they are all unique ❄

This week at Home Ed Forest Club we’ve been celebrating Winter Solstice ❄️🌞 We’ve learned about the Yuletide story of the Holly King and the Oak King and how they bring balance between seasons and light and darkness. We’ve also made our own tree faces along with backstories and made beautiful paper lanterns despite the blustery conditions! We ate mince pies, drunk spiced mulled apple juice and reflected on the individual skills/progression of each child. What a lovely way to end the year. Thanks to all the amazing parents/carers, children and volunteers who make this group an absolute joy to run!

This week at Home Ed Forest Club we learned about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot, ate edible sparklers, made a firework in a jar, created Andy Goldworthy inspired fireworks out of natural resources, played games with our friends, relaxed in the hammock and watched the magical bonfire!

Not so quiet with these two 😂 but ‘The Quiet Space’ is set up for anyone who would like time away from the group to regulate their emotions, relax in the hammock, read a book or play with sensory materials. All group members can come here when needed.

Holiday Halloween fun at Foxfire Woods 🎃 We made pinecone spiders, willow webs, climbed through giant spider webs, made wizard wands, mixed magic potions and stole seeds from the scarecrow’s field!

Fantastic team-working skills today to make these tasty, toadstool cookies. Our Home Ed group made the cookie dough and baked them in a Dutch oven over the fire. They used jam and icing sugar to look like the Fly Agaric fungi 🍄

Today in the Home Ed group we learned about the different trees in our forest, did leaf rubbings, used Hazel-wood to make Halloween decorations, baked cookies sandwiched between Hazel leaves and told collaborative spooky stories around the campfire 🔥🍁🍂

Today at Home Ed Forest Club we learned about spiders 🕷️We learned facts and discussed aspects of their anatomy and behaviour. We also completed the spider web challenge, used tools to make conker spiders and made toffee apples over the fire. 🕸️

We learned about Fascinating Fungi today in Home Ed Forest Club 🍄‍🟫 We went on a fungi hunt, examined them closely and demonstrated how a Toadstool gets its spots using a balloon! 🍄

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“We love coming to your home ed conservation club. It's given my son a confidence boost, alongside being able to learn new things in a less pressured, friendly environment.

As a child with SEN, you have been so flexible, kind and understanding, we really appreciate it!"
Katie

Our Wednesday sessions are currently full so please email to be put on the waiting list.

For Thursday sessions please email ren@foxfirewoods.co.uk or call/message 07814684727 to join.

Our Woodland Sessions

For Children and Young People

Explore the beautiful woods, learn about wildlife and how to look after it, paddle in the streams, swing on ropes, make mud pies, forage, build dens, make friends, create using natural materials, play games and cook snacks over the campfire!

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Our Wednesday sessions are currently full so please email to be put on the waiting list. For Thursday sessions please email ren@foxfirewoods.co.uk or call/message 07814684727 to join.

Our Woodland Sessions

For Children and Young People

Our Wednesday sessions are currently full so please email to be put on the waiting list.

For Thursday sessions please email ren@foxfirewoods.co.uk or call/message 07814684727 to join.