Chiswick - Dinosaur Hunt!

It has been another great week at Chiswick Little Forest Folk. Because of all the rain, the forest has provided us with plenty of muddy puddles. The children have absolutely loved splashing, playing and painting with all the sticky mud. Autumn is wonderful. 

Dinosaur hunt
This week we built a time machine and travelled back to when the dinosaurs were alive. We brought our notebooks, dino lexicon and bags to collect all our treasures. We saw lots of dinosaurs and matched them to the ones in our book. The children were digging for dinosaur bones in the ground, and we even found a big dinosaur footprint. Unfortunately, the big dinosaur was nowhere to be seen. Better luck next time!

Mud kitchen  
Our mud kitchen has been the centre of lots of imaginary play this week. We have had a spaghetti bar, Charlie’s chocolate factory and a dino cafe serving scrambled dinosaur eggs. We have also brought real food for the children to explore and play with. Chia seed pudding was a big hit this week. The children layered the pudding with leaves, mud and sprinkles of coconut. The chia seeds felt so soft and squishy in our hands and was a great sensory activity for the children. 

Arts and crafts 
We have done lots of crafts in the forest this week. Printing on fabric and painting with autumn colours are only a few things we have been busy with. One day we made our own play dough, and formed sculptures with pinecones, sticks and leaves. 

Hammock 
Our hammock has become the new favourite hangout spot in our camp. The children have been chilling and enjoyed swinging while all snuggled up. There is nothing comfier than lying in a hammock under the autumn trees. 

Acting emotions 
This week we invented a new emotion game. We hung up faces showing different emotions and sang a song leading to a particular emotion. The children ran to the matching face of the emotion, and demonstrated the emotion with their body, face and voice. We talked about different strategies to calm ourselves and tried them together. Well done everyone! 

Adventure walk 
We have been practicing recognising the different types of trees in the forest. On our adventure walks our little explorers have been looking at the differences on the leaves and feeling the bark to tell them from one another. We have also been visiting the kitchen garden to look at and enjoy all the beautiful flowers before they disappear for winter. 

Thank you for another lovely week in the forest, we are all looking forward to seeing you next week!

Little Forest Folk
Chiswick