Rope Bridges

Rope Bridges

Building rope bridges encourages team working, problem solving and physical development

These last few months have seen an increase in the number of rope bridges I have been making with Forest School groups. It is interesting to notice how each group takes the same basic springboard and has their way of using it.

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With the younger nursery age children I have noticed how much more time they spend using the bridges if they have been involved in setting them up in the first place. Although having a group of helpful 3 and 4 year olds winding the ropes around trees has its own challenges, they soon get the idea and after a few times doing it they need me to tighten the ropes which they set up.

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It is really good fun pulling together to tighten the ropes, and there is always a bag of other shorter ropes to satisfy the needs of the ones who want to wind and tie ropes around themselves, the trees or my legs.

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One child, who was electively mute in nursery, couldn’t resist shouting ‘look at me’ as he swung from a bridge, repeatedly dropping off to the floor and climbing back on.

Year 5 and 6 children hadn’t been asked to queue or take turns in using the rope bridges but did it spontaneously. Crossing the bridges was part of their quest; they came up with their characters and what the bridge was built to cross. We ended up crossing rivers of fire and chocolate and a lava flow which all featured over a couple of days.

quest

One boy in this group got the idea of how the ropes could be tied to make a bridge and was really chuffed when we used ‘his’ idea.

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Building rope bridges encourages team working, problem solving and physical development; hanging, swinging, traversing etc.

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But it also involves a fair amount of negotiation, turn taking and fine motor development and a lot of laughing.

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