Our Week in the Forest...
This week we headed to Kew Gardens ready for a big walk to the log trail on the other side of the park. The children all put on their strong legs and marched ¾ of the way there before it was time for lunch. We nestled under some large pine trees to shade us from the hot sun that had been following us around all morning. After lunch, some of the children ventured through the long wavy grass to get to the log trail. Here we had lots of fun practising our balancing skills and crawling through small spaces to get to the other side. We had a few falls but each time this happened we felt stronger and more determined to get back up and try again until we reached the end. In the afternoon, we spent some time talking about birds and nests, as we found an empty egg shell under a tree. Avalon spoke with the children about where it might have fallen from and what happened to it. Following on from this, the children were keen to make their own nests using the fallen leaves, pine needles and pine cones under some of the large pine trees near our camp set up. The children thought it was very funny to make one very big and round nest so that some of them could sit inside it.
Once back at Chiswick House and Gardens, we had the pleasure of hosting our Barnes Third in Charge, Tom for a day who had come all the way to visit us. He shared lots of imaginative ideas with the children. There were oodles of role play, with children acting as doctors and nurses and fashioning up crutches using sticks for our educator Sam, as he was ‘very poorly’ and needed to be looked after by the children who took turns acting out the role of the doctor and ambulance drivers.
We headed back to our allotment this week to check on the progress of our vegetable patch. We had to make sure we gave them lots of water as it had been very hot over the weekend. We added some more plants to the crop which consisted of carrots and more peas. This in turn has created a huge interest in cooking with vegetables in the mud kitchen.
The children really enjoyed the obstacle course that was set up this week in the forest. Tom had transformed a section of the woods into a death defying rope walk which gave the children an opportunity to work on their physical development and team work ethos. They each took turns to make their way around the course but also needed to wait for their fellow climbers to navigate their way in front of them which in turn created a lot of concentration and perseverance.
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick