Our week in the forest

Our children have been very helpful with reminding the children who are settling of the rules. We’ve had a few encounters with dogs and the children gave one another gentle reminders,

“Hug yourself. Look. Like this, you have to do this.”

Hugging yourself when you see a dog is one of our four rules when we are in the forest. Our other rules are: No picking and licking, ask an adult if you would like to go on an adventure and we must always use kind hands.

At the beginning of the week we built a house using bricks. We mixed some mud with water and used it as our cement. We then placed the muddy mixture onto the bricks and laid them one on top of another. We sang the ‘Gonna Build a House’ song while we built. After showing the children how to make the cement, they were then able to make it themselves by mixing the water and mud together. The children participated in this activity as a group helping build their teamwork skills.

We painted flags this week to use as our boundaries in the forest. We thought it would be helpful for the children to make something and decide where they want to place it as a boundary. This will make it less likely for them to cross the boundaries as it’s something that they’ve initiated.

We did some hand printing whilst painting our flags. This began a conversation about shapes and size. The children noticed that the adults had “bigger” hands and that their hands were “smaller”. Some of the children decided to count how many fingers they had so we thought it would be pleasant to sing the Fish Alive song.

During our afternoon adventure we went to go and visit our fellow friends, the ducks. We made a new friend who wanted to join the Little Forest Folk family. A little duck followed us around whilst we were exploring the fields. The children showed calm and polite behaviour around the duck so that he wouldn’t run away.

We had a rainy day today after many weeks. The children had missed the rain and spent lots of time splashing in the puddles. The children used one of the big puddles as a witch’s cauldron. They picked up materials they found on the floor and threw it into the cauldron to make a potion. They pretended to drink the potion and thought it tasted delicious.

“Mmmm this potion is yummy.”

Next Week in the Forest

Next week we will be following on from our All About Me topic. Can we ask you to bring in pictures of your children and families as we will be talking about our families.

Ben will sadly be leaving us to go and study his Childcare level 3 qualification. We hope that he will be back once he’s completed his course. He appreciates he has made close relationships with children and has offered to visit us as a volunteer. Ben’s last day will be on Thursday 29th September.

A guide as to what children should wear:

One pair of comfortable trousers
One long sleeve shirt
One pair of socks
Wellies
Waterproofs

Please make sure that your children have their labelled high visibility vests and sun hats in their bags as they wear these on warm days.

Thank you for your ongoing cooperation.