Our Week in the Forest...
Winter is definitely in full swing this week and we have been quick to point out the frost on the plants! We have all been excited to go on adventure walks to the pond where the water has frozen over. We have also observed leaves and bubbles trapped inside ice puddles, which has meant wonderful discussions about how they differ from a mirror. The children have enjoyed jumping onto the icy puddles, watching them smash into tiny pieces, likening it to glass.
We discussed why water freezes and what happens when ice is warmed up again. The children have had great conversations this week, one especially about how they could use the ice to make glasses for our eyes and they wondered what would happen to the glasses if the sun came out! The children and educators were delighted to see our first snow of the year as we walked back to base on Tuesday and were eager to share our experiences the next day of walking home in the snow.
It has also been a rather wet week with lots of muddy puddles to jump and splash in. We have stayed nice and warm in the colder weather by playing games of ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’, ‘Grandma’s footsteps’ and having Jungle races, running across the forest as our favourite Jungle book characters. On one of our adventure walks, we found a den built in the trees and decided to carry back some large sticks to build one of our own. Our “house tree” was completed with a sign that read “HWS TRE”.
Rhyming has been our forte this week, with the children creating some wonderful poems in the forest. With only a little help from the educators to shape our poems, our clever children have found their own rhyming words and created short sentences ending in these words.
“I saw a snake
Sitting on a cornflake,
Then the snake slid off
And had a cough.”
X aged 49 months
“I saw a mouse
In a beautiful house,
He ate smelly cheese
In some nice green trees.”
A aged 53 months
On Wednesday in our ‘Cooking with Nafisa’ session, we enjoyed making our own mini pizzas, choosing from an array of toppings to create our own perfect pizza ready to go home and be cooked in the oven.
At Kew, we visited the palm house where it is still nice and warm even in the winter. The children showed great interest in wandering through the sections, stopping to read every sign and learn about all the plants. We were able to sound out the sounds of some of the different sections “Africa” and “The Americas”, to learn which continents the plants came from. We talked about how the plants were from hotter countries and needed to be kept warm all year round. We searched for the banana plants, found the plants that make Henna and talked about how Henna is used for festivals like Diwali. We felt the different tree trunks and leaves, using our words to describe the textures of the plants, determining if they were rough or smooth and likening their texture to materials like paper and plastic. We were keen to visit the Waterlily house but found it closed for the winter and talked about why we couldn’t see the waterlilies, comparing their absence to animals that hibernate during the colder months. There is always so much to see and learn on our walks!
We hope you all have lovely weekends and see you next week!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick