Forest School: printable card set
A sample of 4 cards. The full set of 72 comes with the collection. Back
Open your sensesOwls & voles

Step by step

  1. Gather your group in a circle and invite volunteers to become trees, small mammals such as voles, shrews or mice, or owls.
  2. Ask the trees to space themselves out inside the circle, standing still to imitate trees.
  3. Invite the small mammals to enter this imitation woodland, practising scurrying, foraging and squeaking on the ground.
  4. Once the activity begins, the small mammals must freeze completely the moment they hear an owl call. The owls then open their wings and swoop through the woodland, and if an owl spots any movement, even a blink, that mammal is captured and moves to the edge of the circle.
  5. After a few owl flybys, swap roles.
The full Wilding activity guide (what you need, safety, variations and questions to wonder about): re-wild.co.uk/g/owls-and-voles/
Forest School · re-wild.co.uk
Open your sensesA noseful of nature

Step by step

  1. Gather your group and invite them to wander with you. Revise the RESPECT code together before starting.
  2. Ask each person to gather a few small pieces of the wild space you are exploring, such as a flower petal, a tree leaf, or a sprinkling of soil or leaf litter.
  3. Place these pieces into a camping mug, then use a small stirring stick to mix them together, releasing their combined scent, and invite everyone to take a sniff of the finished scent cocktail.
The full Wilding activity guide (what you need, safety, variations and questions to wonder about): re-wild.co.uk/g/scent-cocktail/
Forest School · re-wild.co.uk
Open your sensesSound shakers

Step by step

  1. Half fill pairs of small containers with different natural materials, such as ash keys, small stones, water, twigs, hazelnuts, sand, dried leaves or wet mud, so each pair of containers sounds identical. On a flat area, divide your group into 2 equal groups, lining up opposite each other about 5 metres apart. Blindfold everyone and give each person a sound shaker.
  2. When the signal is given, everyone shakes their container and slowly, cautiously walks forward, listening for the container that sounds exactly like their own.
The full Wilding activity guide (what you need, safety, variations and questions to wonder about): re-wild.co.uk/g/sound-shakers/
Forest School · re-wild.co.uk
Open your sensesPin drop

Step by step

  1. Gather the group in a quiet place and ask everyone to sit comfortably, close their eyes and listen until they can hear the quietest sound around them.
  2. 1 person, the dropper, stands in the middle with a handful of small natural objects, such as a pine needle, an acorn, a twig, a pebble, a feather and a dry leaf. The dropper holds 1 object at knee height and lets it fall onto a hard surface, such as a flat stone or a log. Each listener raises a hand if they heard it land. The dropper works from the loudest object down to the quietest, then moves a few paces further away and tries again.
  3. Next, listeners point to where the sound came from, or guess which object was dropped.
  4. Finish with 1 minute of silence, counting on your fingers every natural sound you hear, then share what you noticed.
The full Wilding activity guide (what you need, safety, variations and questions to wonder about): re-wild.co.uk/g/pin-drop/
Forest School · re-wild.co.uk