Our Week in the Forest...
This week in Barnes, we have been enjoying the beautiful autumnal sunshine. We’ve had some fantastic adventures this week, collecting different coloured autumn leaves along with throwing sticks into the river to test whether they will float or sink. We have been very creative with the different leaves this week, making leaf masks and stringing them together with a needle and thread to make some beautiful leaf garland decorations. It was fantastic to observe the children using their fine motor skills and they all worked well together as a team.
Pies have been a big theme in the forest and we saw a very busy pie shop being set up. The children used clay and put leaves, grass and twigs inside their clay pie casing to create strawberry, chicken and vegetable pies. There was a brilliant production line in the role-play, with the customer asking the shop assistant, "Can I have a cheese pie please?". The shop assistant would then tell the customer, "That will be five minutes!" and then ask the bakers to start making the pie. The finished pie was then handed over to the shop assistant, who would take the money and give the customer their delicious pie!
We have also been learning all about the Hindu festival of light Diwali. We have been creating some Diwali rangoli patterns by folding paper into quarters and then cutting different shapes into the paper. There were some brilliant discussions about what shapes we could cut such as triangles, squares and even diamonds. We then opened up our paper to reveal some beautiful geometric patterns. Using paint, we dyed some rice different colours and then pressed the rice into the gaps in our paper, creating some beautiful rangoli inspired patterns. We also made some candle holders by pushing a tea light into clay and then moulding clay into different shapes around the candle. We decorated our candle holders using paint, glitter and flowers.
There have also been some brilliant literacy activities. Lots of our Little Forest Folk-ers have been really interested in writing their own stories and have been experimenting with mark making and drawing pictures. Some of us have even been creating our own little booklets by folding paper and decorating the front cover. Educators have then been helping some children to write words and sentences to create their stories.
We are looking forward to all the exciting activities that will happen next week in Barnes!
Little Forest Folk
Barnes