Our Week in the Forest...
What a varied week this had been! The weather has been so different each day that it gave us a lot of ideas in our play but also tested our resilience. With all the rain this week we had so many opportunities to jump in the puddles, play in the mud and simply enjoy the rain pouring on us.
We welcomed back a few children that came to visit us for a holiday camp. It’s been great to see some familiar faces but it’s been also lovely to see some new friendships emerging and seeing how well other children respond to the new environment. To make it very exciting for our regular children as well as the little visitors, we had a lot of activities that kept us busy. Some of us worked on creating necklaces and bracelets using uncooked pasta as beads. Our Little Forest Folk-ers stayed very focused and engaged whilst trying to thread the beads onto the string. Some of them decided to colour their new jewellery with marker pens or paint.
We encourage children to be as creative and observant as they can be. They often engage with their environment and realise that a lot of resources and materials can be easily found around them in their immediate, natural surroundings. With that in mind, we created some beautiful nature-inspired crowns using double-sided tape and various objects that laid around us. Wonderful creations then emerged. Some children used leaves, feathers and husks, some found browned pine leaves that formed a beautiful array of colours once the crowns were put together. We had a lot of smiles and exclamations of joy, once the children put their headpieces on.
This week two of our educators celebrated their birthdays, both Georgia’s have their birthdays just a day apart so this gave us a great excuse to party and have even more fun. We sang Happy Birthday songs, danced in the mud and rain and had our faces and hands painted. The forest was full of joy and great atmosphere and we had so many smiles on.
To keep us nice and warm but also to ensure that our muscles get enough of exercise we had a lot of running games. We decided to ‘catch and cook’ one of our educators. We chased her and then gathered enough sticks and leaves to create a ‘fire’ that we used to put under our pot. Lucky for us we were so fast we caught her but never got to cook as she escaped. Since our main meal escaped we decided to cook some vegetables instead. This gave us a great opportunity to talk about our favourite fruit and veg and what we like to eat.
Victoria made some incredible climbing frames for us this week, which tested all of our limbs and our balance skills. Installations like that help us develop our core muscles but also give us opportunities to asses risk and help us decide if we are ready for the challenge. We have been in charge of building our own obstacle course using logs that were scattered around our site as well as some rope that the educators gave us. This was a great test of team building and coordination but ended as a great success.
We hope that you have been staying warm and dry this week and that you don’t mind us coming home all muddy!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick