Our Week in the Forest...
We have been spreading some hap-pea-ness in our garden by the playground this week. Since we have a lot of pots and raised beds next to our indoor space, we decided to utilise it and make our space beautiful and bee-friendly. First, we sowed some sweet peas in individual pots. This was a very wholesome activity as children got to touch the soil, measure how much was needed to fill-up the pot and decide how many seeds they needed in their pot. We then discussed what important things plants needed to grow. It was incredible to hear how much children knew about gardening already. We discussed that plants needed sun, water, soil and lots and lots of love to be able to grow and produce fruit. Whilst we chatted about plants’ necessities we decided that we wanted to invite some bees to our garden so we planted lots of flowers so in the spring time the bees will hopefully visit us and help themselves to all the delicious nectar. We are all so excited to watch our plants grow!
To celebrate Pancake Day on Tuesday, we thought it would be a great idea to make pancakes from scratch and include some delicious toppings. Our first step was to create a shopping list to ensure that we had all the necessary ingredients. A few of our friends then went to the shop and purchased everything we needed, including; flour, some baking soda and lots of fruit and maple syrup to make the pancakes super delicious. We then returned to our kitchen, rolled up our sleeves and started cooking. We carefully measured how much of each ingredient we needed to make a perfect mixture. We talked about the difference between small and large scoops and how using those would affect the consistency of our pancakes. When the mixture was finally ready, our teachers fried them for us and we got to decide which toppings to put on them. There were some strawberries, blueberries, bananas and raspberries. They all looked so colourful and delicious once we placed them on our pancakes. It was a great session and a lovely way to turn pancake eating into a learning opportunity!
Although it might seem we’ve been very busy, we definitely didn’t forget about our lovely forest! We discovered a fantastic new base camp that provides lots of space, light and trees to climb. There we could practice balancing on a slack-line, test the strength of our legs on the swing and finally use all our bodies to climb on a spider’s web. The slack-line has not only been a great tool for us to test all the muscles, but has also given us so lots of ideas and sparked our imagination. We pretended it to be a ‘bridge’ that we used to walk from one side of the ‘river’ to the other whilst avoiding being eaten by the crocodiles down below! The forest echoed with laughter when our friends tried to snap us with their scary teeth!
We were impressed at how capable the children were at using the monkey bars we put up one day and how confidently they used the bars to support themselves whilst walking on wobbly logs. There was no fear either when children used a zip-wire that brought us from one tree to another. Our Little Forest Folk-ers are incredibly skilled at judging risks and understanding their abilities. It challenges the educators to be more creative and flexible in finding ways to nourish but also test those skills.
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick