Our Week in the Forest...
We ended last week in the forest with a nice relaxing day at one of our favourite spots affectionately termed ‘the rolling hills’. On this day the pond was a particularly popular spot to hang out and the children demonstrated great problem solving and mathematics skills as they worked continuously to improve on their fishing rods. This was prompted by a discussion about how the flower tied to the end of the rod floated on top of the water, but we needed something that sank. The children felt that something heavy was needed and began searching for stones. A lot of thought went into choosing the right stone and questioning whether the stone was big enough and heavy to sink when tied to the end of the string. Questions about why the water was shimmering were raised, as well as observations of how objects looked smaller under the water. This prompted some interesting child-led discussions and sustained shared thinking.
We visited the allotment this week to collect the purple beans which had been growing in abundance and left with a large bounty! The children are now confident with choosing and picking the longest beans while leaving the smaller ones to grow some more - the allotment has been a great learning experience for the children, and we have certainly reaped the rewards when sampling our home grown goodies. We were happy to see that the sun–kissed tomatoes are beginning to turn red and were able to have our first taste. The children commented on how juicy they were and remarked on the different colours of the tomato skins as they ripened.
Blackberries have been growing in abundance throughout Chiswick House and Gardens. This week they have been a welcome addition to our mud kitchen. On Tuesday we filled a cooking pot with berries and took it back to Piccolo where the children took great delight in squashing the berries to make a paint. This paint was sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard and jumped up and down on. When the cardboard was opened we talked about the mirror images that had been created and the children loved seeing how the berries had exploded inside. The children also took great delight in rolling berries down the bridge, having races to see whose blackberry would get to the bottom first.
Later in the week as we arrived one morning, we were greeted with an exciting gift… a frog! The frog had been found in the carpark by a passer by (and as it turns out, a fan of Little Forest Folk!), and he thought we might like to take the frog back to the pond inside the gardens. The children took turns for an up-close look at the frog before we took him down to the lake to find his new home. The frog didn’t seem to approve of the spot by the lake we had chosen and decided to jump across our wellies to the other side of the path sending us scattering in lots of different directions – RIBBIT!.
We hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Little Forest Folk Chiswick