Windy Kites, Flower Soup and Duckling Spotting
Our two weeks of sun were brought to an end by huge winds and much needed rain! The forest drank it up and our children rejoiced that puddles had returned!
In making this week we’ve made tribute structures to the little people who live in the forest. I’m not talking about our children; rumour is spreading that the woods are inhabited by magical creatures, maybe they’re imps, faeries or gnomes. Regardless we’ve enjoyed using arm length sticks and twine to construct them little tipis to sleep in during the night. Kites were also crafted to fly high on the incredibly windy Tuesday we had.
Some of the books that have caught our attention this week have been large picture books packed with detail. It can be fun to read but it’s also interesting to see what we can spot and discuss. This has worked really well with the illustrated animal encyclopaedia that teaches us about all kinds of creatures. It worked well with the “You Choose” books, especially one that features lots of rooms of a large spaceship. We played a game where we had to spot tiny items and features on the page, our children have eagle eyes!
Songs have been hugely popular this week with tunes lifting our spirits on our walk ins, circle time and throughout the day. Crowd favourites have been “Slippery Fish” (especially the humongous whale refrain!), “Baby Bumblebee” (a good cautionary tale) and “Tiny Turtle Tim” (timely; it’s about popping bubbles!).
To protect the forest floor, we switch our basecamp every now and then, plus it keeps things interesting. We’ve moved to an excellent site with a huge tree stump which has been exhilarating to leap from, doing Olympic gymnast level landings, and sometimes spins and tricks. At our new basecamp we are surrounded by camellia bushes which have been kind enough to start depositing their beautiful flowers. Our children have enjoyed collecting them, gifting them to their friends and adding them to flower soup! In the mud kitchen our cooks have been utilising scales to be more precise, measuring ingredients.
We’ve been on our first few adventure walks as a complete team and they’ve been amazing! As the saying goes… the more the merrier. We’ve had so much fun going duckling, gosling and cygnet spotting in the spring sunshine.
We really enjoyed crafting some gliding paper aeroplanes which have soared on the April gusts. Some children even decided that our teachers were aeroplanes too, flying them through the forest. Engineers had to come to fill them up with more fuel!
Whilst the weather is occasionally nippy we overcome the chill with lots of running games. Popular ones this week have been What’s The Time Mr Wolf with increasing numbers of wolves, and an animal themed game where spiders, dinosaurs and mermaids showed us their different running techniques evading catchers!
Have wonderful weekends everyone!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick