The woods felt magical this week! With the sun peeking through the trees’ crowns and the robins sweetly singing to the rhythm of the day, we felt like we got stuck in a land of fairies.
A curious robin befriended us this week and kept following us wherever we decided to set camp up for the day. He became bolder in approaching us and sat on the log next to the children when we sang our good morning song. Perhaps he wants to be part of the nursery too? With so much delicious food being served each day, we cannot blame him for wanting to pick up all the crumbs that have been left on the forest floor! He kept spying on us from the treetops whilst we zoomed through the forest on our zip line, pretending to be birds. The zipline gave us a double thrill - not only we did we go from one end of the forest to the other, we also had a ladder to climb. There was a lot of problem-solving involved and our Little Forest Folk-ers did not give up or fail. The confidence and risk-assessing that went on was very impressive, we wonder where that courage comes from!
The Autumn lady is definitely on her way and blessing us with so many treasures which have been used creatively in our learning. We used conkers found on the Autumn forest floor, which served as balls in our experiment. To create our experiment, we used a hollowed-out log that we propped against a tree, then using our conkers, we rolled them down to see how fast they would go and where they would land. Later on in the week, we added more hollowed out logs to make a construction as we wanted to see if the ball would fall multiple times. Very quickly our experiment turned into a racing game with children cheering friends and their conkers on. The conkers and maple tree wings served as excellent objects for practicing our counting skills. We collected as many treasures as we could find, added some holly berries found on the floor and voila! We had ourselves a lovely array of objects we could add, take away and count. With so many objects, we could count up to fifty which was a real challenge but some of us had no real trouble with it.
Our two favourite things this week were the hammock and apple pressing! We were invited by the gardeners to come help make yummy apple juice from the apples we had freshly picked from the allotment. Using a traditional press with the power of our muscles, we managed to extract a delicious juice that was perfectly refreshing on a warm, sunny day. The hammock was an all-time favourite, with so many of the children wanting to feel the breeze whilst their friends gently rocked them. It was a lovely spot to look up and watch the trees and the sky swing above us.
We wish you a magical weekend ahead and see you on Monday for some more forest adventures!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick