"I'll GET more!" cries five-year-old Jasmine Alissa, holding her muddy hands aloft.
"I'll get some more yucky mud."
As she runs across the school field, her friends Jessica Edwards and Tia Chaplin break down the clods of mud in a plastic bucket and stir vigorously.
"We are making chocolate mud pies," grins Tia.
"We need to mix up the dry and wet mud," explains Jessica.
The sunny, mild November afternoon is perfect for the Forest School session, which is being run at Holly Trees Primary in Warley.
This is the sixth and final pilot session run in the school grounds, after which teacher Tina Bastable, or Tina Turtle as she is known during Forest School, will be fully qualified to lead sessions in the local woods.
The Vaughan Williams Way school has joined a growing number in Essex to offer Forest School, a child-centred outdoor learning experience which aims to transport children back to a 'riskier' age when they could play outdoors alone, climbing trees, cutting wood and building dens – just still tick all the health and safety boxes.
At the start of the two-hour session, clad in their old jeans and wellies, the Year 1 pupils sit around the school's wooden shelter where Mrs Bastable produces a saw from her bag.
She explains clearly how to use it and minutes later the five and six-year-olds are queuing to saw through some logs, under careful supervision.
Each child, teacher and parent helpers has chosen an alternative surname based on an animal which is only used during Forest School.
Mae Crowther-Barnes, who has become Mae Mouse and her friend Hetty Gevaux, alias Hetty Hedgehog, are happily playing with their new tools.
"I'm whittling," says Mae as she expertly uses a potato peeler to take off layers of a twig."
"I've not done this before, it's great."
Mrs Bastable approached head teacher Paula Masters after hearing about Forest School on a course. She said: "It is about learning to manage tools safely, learning to take a managed risk.
"The pupils absolutely love it.
"The first time they were not sure what to do, but were just so excited. They do not want it to stop at the end of the afternoon."
Mrs Bastable says the side effects of Forest School are raising pupils' self-esteem, confidence and their motivation, which has a knock-on effect back in the classroom.
Another benefit is that Forest School allows her to see her pupils, whom she started teaching in September, in a different light. Often the quiet ones in the classroom come to life outdoors.
Mrs Barstable, who has just completed the course to be a Forest School leader which has taken a year and involved weekend training sessions and assignments including writing a guide for parents, said: "As they are outside immediately all their senses are engaged.
"They have the freedom to undertake their own activities. I think we have gelled more as a class since we started the sessions."
The Year 1 children, who are aged five to six, are the first to benefit from Forest School, with the reception children starting in the New Year.
Mrs Masters said: "Other members of staff have expressed an interest in becoming leaders so we hope to extend Forest School to include other years too."
Forest School is one of the green credentials that have earned Holly Trees its first Green Flag. An outside assessor spent a morning checking out all the schemes the school has for being kind to the environment before rubber-stamping its application.
Head teacher Paula Masters said: "We have so embedded our environmental work into school life that it was not until we were assessed that we realised just how much we do."
She added: "We are very proud to have won three trophies in this year's awards. With the environmental award it is a case of finding something new to do each year which is quite a challenge."
