CLIMBING FRAMES, ROPES & LADDERS with JON CREE - HAMPSHIRE

This course is for educators wishing to be a little more adventurous with creative play structures at their sites, building them out of wood and rope and combining these with the natural features at your site. We will be sharing techniques and know-how on building safe but slightly risky (!) structures with children that can enhance creativity and physical play at your forest school site.

We will be looking at techniques for making:

• Rope swings, rope bridges, rope crawls and rope walks
• Combining wood with rope including simple rope ladders
• Making free standing wooden structures such as ladders and sculptures to climb on

Including tips on:

• How to minimise impact of structures on Forest school sites
• Keeping within the health and safety guidelines for safe construction and use of natural structures

We will look at basic tool work, knot and rope work in order to construct ladders, ‘climbing frames’, temporary rope swings and rope courses, as well as putting up and playing with strap-lines. We will look at how to work with young people in constructing basic structures that includes working with trees or if the trees in your own settings are limited how to construct features by adding structures such as ‘beams’ to trees and working with A frames and ‘safe anchoring’.

The training course will also cover all the health and safety aspects of working with ‘constructed’ play structures and ropes, looking at risk benefit assessments and key requirements.