Our Week in the Forest...
This week in the forest has been full of adventure and exploration. With our first escapades to Putney Heath it has been very exciting!
At Rocks Lane the children fully immersed themselves with some wonderful projects. On one day the children noticed some big dark clouds looming and decided that a storm was coming. They then set themselves the task of creating a storm shelter! A large team of children, helped by Tom, proceeded to dig down deep under the vegetable patch excavating their very own bunker. They used trowels and the big spade to removed dirt and reinforce the walls. Once it was dug out they collected the planks to put across the hole to serve as a very sturdy roof. When finished the children took turns to hide out in their shelter and wait for the storm to hit. Fortunately the large black cloud passed us by uneventfully and the children resumed playing using their shelter as a home base.
The children also continued their book making skills using expert threading techniques to bind their own books before writing stories or narrating facts for educators to scribe down. It has been amazing to see how much progress the children have made this term with both their dexterity in making books and their literacy skills.
On our first adventures to Putney Heath the children were super excited to be travelling by minibus, singing songs and taking about what they could see outside the windows. Once there the children found themselves trekking through a big deep forest full of the signs of spring. We saw tiny buds, new shoots and leaves, flowers, and a whole host of minibeasts and birds amongst the trees. When they spotted some wildlife they used identification cards to try to identify what they had found!
At our new base camp the children were quick to set off and explore their new environment! They soon found a wonderful old tree that has fallen down and they used it for most of their play that day. It became a train and rocket ship destined for some exotic locations from Africa and America to the moon! It has also been the source of some new challenging climbing and jumping as the children scaled the log and walked across it before finding a safe place to jump off it landing safely in the soft leaves. Some children wanted a target to land on so they began writing their initials on the ground to aim at. Some of the older children showed great teaching skills as they supported others to learn the first letter of their name and write it down.
We also had a wonderful day where the children all worked together to build a fantastic den. A huge group of children went off around the forest searching for sticks on the ground to collect and use to make the structure of their den. They found short fat logs for seats and long thin sticks for the walls and roof. Once finished the children set up home and played for hours as a families or emergency crew!
They also went off on some wonderful adventures through the forest finding; spring flowers, wasps, bees, shield bugs, worms, ants, woodlice, beetles, sparrows, magpies, blue tits, blackbirds, crows and a butterfly! As they walked around this lovely natural environment some of the children noticed some of the rubbish left by other people and decided that they wanted to protect the animals and clean up the forest. So off we went on another adventure searching out rubbish and clearing it away safely.
It has been such an amazing week and we can’t wait to do it all again next week!
Little Forest Folk
Barnes