Our Week in the Forest...
Confidence, courage and courtesy have permeated the forest this week! The children have shown a wonderful ability to tackle new challenges and overcome obstacles both physically and emotionally. The resilience the children show each day is astounding for their age.
In order to stay warm this week the children have been collaborating on some wonderfully active role-play games often including a building project to create props and scenes in their stories. One project led the children to create their own monkey house. They collected sticks, leaves and logs working together to form a den. There was lots of discussion around where to put the big sticks and where to put the small sticks! Soon the team of builders became monkeys and started to screech around the forest showing great creativity as they sought to imitate monkeys. We went off in search of bananas and the parent monkeys fed the baby monkeys.
Another project started on the walk into the forest. The children decided as a group that they wanted to go on a forest bus. We began to discuss what we would need and the children all came up with lots of ideas – sticks, leaves, logs, branches and grass, which were then all collected on route to the forest. They even decided what different parts of the bus they would make. They talked about making the pistons for the engine, the wiper blades, the wheels, the upper deck, the steering wheel, the bell, the horn, the steps and the seats! After snack, many of the children were eager to get going with their project and sat on a large log. We used string to tie sticks together to make a steering wheel, small logs made the wheels, sticks in the ground made the upper deck, and thin sticks for the wiper blades. The children then sang ‘wheels on the bus’ as we set off for Africa! To make the journey faster they decided the bus had rocket boosters and could fly so we only had to make one stop at Waterloo to refuel!
The creative construction continued as the children created their own game. They made their own cricket game using wooden marbles, wooden spoons, spatulas and a special pitch!
Throughout all of these projects the thing that shone out from all the children of all ages was their amazing ability to communicate effectively with each other and were able to come to agreements on the best course of action.
This week we also had lots of painting and crafty projects as the children made birthday cards for their friends, educators and special pictures for their families. As they painted their pictures we noticed an increasing ability in the children to create recognisable images that they were super proud of. Dinosaurs, cars, rockets, dogs, cats and family portraits were painted and hung in the forest for all to see.
One day the children spent a long time building a special mini house for our friendly local robin. They spent the whole morning using little sticks, leaves, string and bark to make a house, bird bath and snack area. As they were nearing completion of the project, to the children’s delight, the robin came hopping up to within inches of them. They sat perfectly still as they had a wonderful close up experience of observing a robin who was clearly approving the house that they had built for him!
We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and we can’t wait to see what projects will crop up next week!
Little Forest Folk
Barnes