Our Week in the Forest...
This week has been full of adventure. We have enjoyed all types of weather as the sun decided to part way for some much-needed rain. This meant that the wellies came back out for a day and the puddles were waiting our arrival. The children enjoyed using the water in a variety of ways during the wetter part of the week. There was a lot of enthusiasm around dinosaur play this week and the water became a great source for adding an extra dimension to our dinosaur’s small world. The children enjoyed making swimming pools amongst foliage for them and it also made great hiding places for them once the water had turned into a very muddy puddle!
The children headed off one afternoon to the garden to help collect apples that had fallen in the allotment. The gardeners are always so pleased with our efforts as it makes the garden look nice and tidy. The children shared buckets between pairs and made a quick dash out into the allotment to see who could collect the most. There was a lot of excitement over how many we could spot as the storm the night before had shaken up all of the trees which had dropped all the bad apples to the floor ready for collecting. We took them back to the garden shed and took turns holding the apple buckets up to see who had the heaviest, the most and the least. Rosemary, the lovely gardener rewarded all the children with a delicious fresh raspberry for all their hard work.
Once the sun decided to come back out again it was time to get creative with our water play. Otis had prepared some dinosaurs in ice the night before and in the morning the children were fascinated to find the dinosaurs stuck in blocks of ice. They got very creative when finding ways to try and get them out. There were stones involved, long skinny sticks to try pick away at the ice and then big strong sticks to hammer them. In the end, the children managed to release all of the dinosaurs from their ice chambers and returned them to the ‘wilderness’.
Karina had also prepared a big dinosaur skeleton on the forest floor using flour to outline the bones of the dinosaur. The children had a great time collecting a range of sticks to use as bones and had to fit them in and around the bone shapes to see which ones were the best. They all took their time and were very detailed in finding sticks that were exactly the right size and length for certain areas of the dinosaur’s body. The finished product was quite impressive as it spread across the forest floor like fossilised dinosaur remains.
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick