Our Week in the Forest...

This week in the forest the children have started to develop more independence in their play.

We had a group of 10 children all playing “rescue teams”. There were two year olds, three year olds and a four year olds all fully engaged in playing together as a team. It was wonderful to see the communication and imagination as they went about saving people. They decided that there was a fire on a beach so they ran off to the fire station and grabbed a hose. Some children used hoses to quell the flames whilst others helped people to safety. The situation developed as an avalanche and suddenly came down onto the beach. The ambulance crew were called to come and save the day. This continued all morning without any adult interactions; the independence and collaboration throughout this role-play was fantastic!

Later in the week some of the children decided that they wanted to build a dinosaur house. One child decided it would be a “smelly dinosaur house”. Ropes were tied by a teacher for children to lean sticks on, and the children then independently created their house discussing what they were doing as they went. One child said “this is the canon for shooting tennis balls at monsters!” As they finished building, more children came over to become dinosaurs and monsters.

This week has also seen the introduction of whittling wood using peelers. The children showed superb skill in removing the bark off sticks to make magic wands or special sticks to build with.

We have also started welcoming some new faces to the forest this week. We are all so proud of how well they have all done on their settling in days. We look forward to welcoming more new faces next week!

Little Forest Folk
Barnes