Our Week in the Forest...
What a beautiful week it has been in the forest! Basking in the sunshine with their friends, the children have been deep in discussion about what they have been learning each day. Conversations wandered from plants and animals, to the children's interests, and onto their opinions and ideas about their play and home lives. The children show a strong cohesion and each passing day sees them coming together to play with care for each other.
Following our trip to the garden plot last week we’ve been making regular visits to plant a fresh batch of vegetables, as well as maintaining our already planted crops. The children have thoroughly enjoyed getting their green fingers stuck into the mud to plant seeds and cuttings. They have also shown a great level of care and attention when checking the progress of their seedlings and giving the young plants a drink of water. We have also planted seeds in some welly boots and have used them to line the entrance to the Piccolo centre. Each morning when the children arrive at Little Forest Folk they can check how far each plant has grown. The discussions that are arising from watching the plants grow are fascinating, with children sharing what they notice and why they think certain plants grow differently. It’s intriguing to see the children share valid scientific points that they have arrived at naturally, simply through watching the world around them.
With a growing bank of DIY resources, this week has seen the addition of a zipline in the forest! All our children have loved hanging onto the handle and zooming across the forest clearing, immediately re-joining the queue to do it all over again. The children have shown great strength and composure when using the zipline for the first time, with some children showing their resilience in challenging themselves to take on something new. After a little help from the educators at the start it wasn’t long before the children were helping each other, holding the handle still for each other and helping one another onto the launch pad. Some children showed their linguistic skills through the wide use of vocabulary to describe the zipline experience. The children talked about how they zoomed, whizzed, flew, blasted off, and zipped across the clearing. Other children used the zipline as a means of extending their roleplay, imagining it as a rocket ship, an aeroplane and themselves as flying superheroes. Needless to say, we think that the zipline will be here to stay!
During morning snack this week the children were listening to the chorus of bird chatter that was flitting around the forest canopy above us. After sharing their opinions, the children came to the conclusion that the birds were talking about how delicious our snacks looked. We’ve got some cheeky resident blackbirds that like to swoop down and look for crumbs after we go to play. In an effort to help the hungry birds the children decided that they’d like to make bird feeders. With a fantastic tutorial from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the children got stuck in, hand churning blocks of lard and bird seed mix. The children gathered around the mixing bowl and took it in turns to make their own feeder. As they watched and waited for their turn, the children talked about how they hoped the birds would react to such a kind gesture. With the feeders now dotted around the forest clearing, we hope to see a ranged of different birds stopping by for a bite to eat.
Food in the forest:
As we head into June next week we'll have some menu changes - look out for our menu update which will be sent out in the next few days.
Our full May menu can be found on our website HERE
One of our tasty new lunch items from next week:
Petit pois, mint pesto and mozzarella wrap
We blitz Petit Pois with garlic, mint, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, mozzarella and cheddar. The pesto is spread onto wraps (with some extra cheese) and toasted.
The children will enjoy these in the forest with cucumber slices and carrot batons.
Have a wonderful long weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick
