I am a teacher and have offerred to run an after school Bushcraft Duke of Edinburgh's Bronze Award course for 16 14/15year old girls. Its a long story
I would welcome sombody to sanity check my ideas.
It will be 6 one hour sessions after school and an overnight stay on a local farm, so I was thinking
Session 1 Using kinves - they can make the emergy board sharpening kits mentioned elsewhere on this forum. I can probably get the bits for that from teh tech block.
The school are very twitchy about knives and they are not allowed to bring them to school, so I was going to buy 8 Frosts Maras, they can share one between two, and I will keep locked up.
Session 2 Firelighting - Lets get them onto the good stuff early, so that was just going to be a small pile of wood round the back of the sports hall just get used to setting fire to things, and probably toast some marshmallows.
Session 3 Make billies out of stainless steel sugar containers (£1 each from Wilkinsons) and wire coat hangers and learn how to cut wood with a folding saw.
Session 4 Food - This is going to be good as I am bound by all kinds of restrictions here and I have already been told that preparing chickens or rabbits on school property is out, I am probably going to start a BBQ using lighter fluid and they can make damper and bannock for that.
Session 5 Shelter Building - Its going to have to be tarps, and as money is tight probably blue pastic ones from B&Q or their DPM equivalent from the camping shop.
Session 6 - First Aid - The school insist on that one!
The Overnight stay will be 24 hours when they get to
- Put their shelters up
- Collect and prepare wood for a fire (I will buy 4 laplander saws for that)
- light a fire and cook dinner in their billies.
- Cook damper and bannock
- Sleep (no chance!)
- Relight fires, breakfast is porridge in billies and sausages on sticks.
- Make cordage from nettles
- Do some work on recognising trees
This means I am going to have to aquire:
16 tarps (or 8 double sized ones)
200m of para cord, or possibly thick sisal string for this one!
16 personal first aid kits (£1 each from wilkinson)
16 Stainless steel sugar cans (£1 each from wilkinson)
Stuff to make 16 knife sharpening sets
8 Frosts maras
4 Laplander saws
I have deliberatly left out:
- Axes, its only me a couple of female teachers to make the numbers up so I am not going to have time to do this properly and I doubt any of the girls will have decent footwear.
- Butchering, the school have pretty much told no beause of food regulations.
- Forraging, I am crap at it!
- Making gadgets, I am not going to have time to teach them the knots.
- Natural Shelters, I am not going to have time to do this justice.
Please if you have any comments about the plans then I would welcome them, but before anybody mentions it I know I could probably force the issue about butchering but I won teh battle about letting them use knives and I can't aford to upset too many other people at the moment![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Oh and I can't use anybody from outside the school staff because of CRBs and insurance and stuff...![Roll Eyes :rolleyes: :rolleyes:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
I would welcome sombody to sanity check my ideas.
It will be 6 one hour sessions after school and an overnight stay on a local farm, so I was thinking
Session 1 Using kinves - they can make the emergy board sharpening kits mentioned elsewhere on this forum. I can probably get the bits for that from teh tech block.
Session 2 Firelighting - Lets get them onto the good stuff early, so that was just going to be a small pile of wood round the back of the sports hall just get used to setting fire to things, and probably toast some marshmallows.
Session 3 Make billies out of stainless steel sugar containers (£1 each from Wilkinsons) and wire coat hangers and learn how to cut wood with a folding saw.
Session 4 Food - This is going to be good as I am bound by all kinds of restrictions here and I have already been told that preparing chickens or rabbits on school property is out, I am probably going to start a BBQ using lighter fluid and they can make damper and bannock for that.
Session 5 Shelter Building - Its going to have to be tarps, and as money is tight probably blue pastic ones from B&Q or their DPM equivalent from the camping shop.
Session 6 - First Aid - The school insist on that one!
The Overnight stay will be 24 hours when they get to
- Put their shelters up
- Collect and prepare wood for a fire (I will buy 4 laplander saws for that)
- light a fire and cook dinner in their billies.
- Cook damper and bannock
- Sleep (no chance!)
- Relight fires, breakfast is porridge in billies and sausages on sticks.
- Make cordage from nettles
- Do some work on recognising trees
This means I am going to have to aquire:
16 tarps (or 8 double sized ones)
200m of para cord, or possibly thick sisal string for this one!
16 personal first aid kits (£1 each from wilkinson)
16 Stainless steel sugar cans (£1 each from wilkinson)
Stuff to make 16 knife sharpening sets
8 Frosts maras
4 Laplander saws
I have deliberatly left out:
- Axes, its only me a couple of female teachers to make the numbers up so I am not going to have time to do this properly and I doubt any of the girls will have decent footwear.
- Butchering, the school have pretty much told no beause of food regulations.
![Slap :slap: :slap:](/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies_bcuk/slap.gif)
- Forraging, I am crap at it!
- Making gadgets, I am not going to have time to teach them the knots.
- Natural Shelters, I am not going to have time to do this justice.
Please if you have any comments about the plans then I would welcome them, but before anybody mentions it I know I could probably force the issue about butchering but I won teh battle about letting them use knives and I can't aford to upset too many other people at the moment
Oh and I can't use anybody from outside the school staff because of CRBs and insurance and stuff...