October update from Shannon Rae, Heritage Lottery Trainee

At the beginning of October I did the first module in my Level 3 Forest School Training. It was at Mallydams Wood and lasted five days. 

Sussex Wildlife Trust's Communities and Wildlife Training Officer Mike Murphy and Leader Cleo Alper taught a group of six of us. The course aims to give you skills to teach outdoor education over a series of  sessions. 

The outdoor education has a focus on using natural materials to build fires, make shelters and make craft items. To do this we were taught how to use various tools, such as axes, saws and knives and how to incorporate nature into fun games and activities. The main blog picture shows me making a necklace, which was achieved by sawing off a disc of wood and using a palm drill to make the string hole. It was peaceful and wholesome to spend time in a woodland environment, shared by such wonderful creatures and people. I learnt many new skills in tool usage and fire building and am excited to share this knowledge with my own group of Forest School students. 

The next step is to begin the required portfolio of my skills and planning of my sessions, and the complete module two in January 2023.

As well as the skills learnt I also had lots of fun searching the woods for fungi. Being fungi season there was no shortage of interesting and colourful species to be seen, including the iconic Fly Agaric (see above).