On Monday we built a castle using our den building techniques which we’ve practiced previously. Jose, Ben and the children found long logs in the forest and helped put them together to build our castle. The children demonstrated brilliant team work when finding logs, carrying them and then putting them together. We pretended we were giants protecting our golden eggs in the castle.

We used clay to make little bean shapes and pressed our beans onto sticks. We called these our magic beans. We added seeds to our magic beans and sat down for a while just pressing the seeds into the clay. The children seemed to like the texture of the clay and the seeds pressed together.

“This is my bean stalk.”

The children show great interest when Ben and Manuel tell them stories. Sometimes they prefer improvised stories rather than actual story books. Ben retold his own version of the story Jack and the Beanstalk. After Ben had told the children his version of the story, the children asked for it over and over again.

“Fee fi fo fum”

“I have the golden egg.”

We looked at different types of seeds with Arturo and Conor. We discovered Sesame, poppy, sunflower seeds and bird food. The children got to smell, feel and taste the seeds before we planted them in the forest.

“Can I put this one in my mouth?”

With the bird food we took bunches in our hands and scattered it all over the meadow. We hoped to find some birds eating the bird food in the meadow the next day.

We also made beautiful patterns and pictures with the seeds. The children took the seeds and stuck them to the masking tape so that their pictures and patterns could stay in place. This activity gave us a good opportunity to talk about different types of patterns. Some of the children came up with their own repeated patterns.

Ama prepared an activity with sticks, leaves and fabric. We made little stickmen puppets and cut out little outfits for them using the fabric. We gave our puppets names and characters and used them for imaginative play.

Next Week in the Forest

Next week our topic will be Dragon Hunters. We will be making shields, swords and bows and arrows to help us hunt the dragons. We’ll also be playing a game called Capture the Flag. The children will get to find the hidden flags and bring it back to their territory. If they get caught by their friends, they’ll get put straight into jail and must be freed by one of their team members.