Our Week in the Forest...
This week we have had some enthusiastic adventures into nature. We have found an abundance of different flora and fauna with the children using their powers of detection to find things that even the most trained adults would miss. Their determination and ability to look closely at things allows them to see the minute details in the environment.
On our walk out to the forest, we noticed that there was some thick moss growing up the side of a tree. The children then decided to go off in search of more. They found it everywhere! Growing on the verge amongst the brambles and ferns, on fallen logs and on the edge of rabbit holes. As the children looked more closely at the moss, studying it from just a few inches away, they compared it to a giant jungle imagining that they could be as tiny as an ant and walk through a forest of moss!
At camp, the children worked hard to build their own role-play areas. They went off in small groups eager to find suitable branches on the forest floor to build with. Some sticks were so long it took three children to carry them back to camp! They then set about making storm shelters, police stations, houses and shops. They used ropes to tie sticks together and a gap in a tree to wedge longer sticks at an angle for support. They used amazing problem-solving skills to figure out how to make the structure as strong as they could. They debated which stick would be best to use next and explained to each other how to tie the best knots. Once finished, the children used their creation to play games in for hours on end. There were super hero patrols, police officers and an amazing ice-cream shop that delivered ice-cream to wherever you were in the forest!
At Rocks Lane, after much preparation of our vegetable patch, the children were super excited that some of our seeds and bulbs had arrived. They used sticks to make holes in the earth before learning about which way the bulbs had to be planted. The children were very careful to get this correct and handled everything with great care. Once covered with earth, the children got some water to soak them before discussing how to protect the growing shoots. A few of our Little Forest Folk-ers stayed with the plants explaining to other children how they must not walk on the soil because the seeds are growing there! The children also planted some potatoes this week and, remembering how well they grew last year, got very excited at the prospect of more home-grown potatoes to cook on the fire!
We have lots more planting to do over the next few weeks and we are all super excited to see the shoots start to appear as we take care of them and nurture them to grow to their full potential.
We hope you all have had a wonderful week and to those not joining us for holiday camp, we hope you have a fantastic Easter break!
Little Forest Folk
Barnes