The Spreading of Joy!
Our Forest School sessions are back in full swing as all of our children have returned to school. As the signs of spring around us have spread, so has our happiness and wellbeing. Nature is at her busy, bustling best. Bees are bumbling, birds are busy making nests and feeding chicks, spring flowers are lining up in procession, as the yellows of daffodils and crocuses have faded, the beautiful blues of bluebells and birds eye speedwell have come in their place. At one of our sites blue tits are nesting in the Forest School shelter and mining bees have taken up residence in the pizza oven!
We have been helping the wildlife around the Forest School sites too, upcycling old drinks cartons into bird feeders, making bee hotels from old tubing and bamboo canes, planting wildflowers for pollinators and making deadwood habitat piles to support wonderful invertebrates such as the Lesser Stag Beetle.We have also been learning about how important and tree-rrific trees are!
We have a perfect symbiosis with trees, humans breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide while the trees breath in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. It is this absorption of carbon dioxide that makes trees so important in the fight against climate change, locking up carbon in their wood, leaves and roots. They also help fight the effects of climate change by filtering out air pollution, reducing the temperature in city centres and helping to prevent flooding.
But it’s not just us humans that trees help to support. A single mature oak tree can support over 2000 other species from bats and birds breeding in holes and fissures in the tree, to badgers, foxes and rabbits burrowing under their roots as well as a myriad of invertebrates in every part of the tree from the dead heartwood in the centre of the tree to caterpillars and leaf miners in the canopy. Trees are so important in our plight to save nature (including us humans) and at many of our sites we have been busy tree planting with the children, helping them to grow hope for the future.
Posted by Ellen Surtees on May 25th 2021
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