Our Week in the Forest...
This week in the forest the children have embarked on some wonderful new learning journeys. There have been scientific experiments, theatrical role-play and some incredible writing!
There has been an explosion of interest in writing in the forest as children have sought to write their own stories. It started with a small group who wanted to become authors and write their own books. Some drew pictures and made marks before reading it all to their friends and educators, whilst others were able to write down whole stories using a variety of different techniques to spell out the words, draw the pictures and read it back to us. Soon other children noticed the lovely stories being shared and wanted to get involved themselves. Creative writing, mark making and beautiful pictures began springing up from everywhere! Each child had a purpose and knew exactly what they were trying to achieve and did so with enormous enthusiasm.
We have also seen some incredible magic potions being created in the forest this week as the children explored chemical reactions with Morwenna. They mixed up a range of different ingredients that they had found and then mixed in vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to make a frothy potion. Each child created their own potion and explained what magical powers it contained and what might happen if we drank some. Some wanted to see if we could make a more explosive potion using different ingredients so the next day we provided our Little Forest Folk-ers with Mentos and Coca-Cola. Everyone was expecting a bigger reaction as they mixed up their ingredients but were disappointed to see a tiny little fizz. This is when we realised that the Coca-Cola was old and had lost its fizz! After finding some new Coca-Cola the children tested it in the magic potions again, this time there were some wonderful reactions as their potions bubbled and boiled over the sides of their containers in a much more explosive way than they had seen before!
One of the most wonderful things about this week has been the number of children who have been getting involved in the same role-play idea. On one day, we had more than half of the children pretending to be on a boat made from planks and upside-down boxes. All the children were fully engaged in the same theme, listening to each other’s ideas and extending them. Soon they began to pretend to fall off the side of the boat and others set about rescuing them with ropes. Other children joined in as sharks, whales and sea tigers which created a lot of excitement as the children were still falling from the boat into the sea and trying to escape from the dangers that lurked there! Roles swapped and changed naturally and they continued to play independently and cooperatively for an extended period of time.
This week the children have also been involved in making their own paper with Morwenna. They made a pulp with torn tissue paper, water and mashing all the ingredients up. Then, after waiting 24 hours, they used a screen to spread the pulp onto and slowly drain and dry to form the paper. We are all super excited to see the results so that we can use our homemade paper to create something new!
Little Forest Folk
Barnes