Our Week in the Forest...

What a crazy week of weather! Monday started with the most brilliant sunshine so we had an adventure walk into the forest to make the most of the glorious weather. We fished in the pond, rolled down the hills and shouted up through the overflow piping to our friends at the pond. With the sun casting strong shadows on the paths we were able to have some fun and create amazing shapes with our bodies.

As quickly as the sun had come, it was gone again and as we arrived in the forest on Tuesday morning we found the biggest puddles. Such puddles are always a delight for the chefs and bakers amongst us who quickly got cooking up cakes. Pots and pans were used to scoop up and transport the water across the gardens. In the afternoon we began to make our own dams. This involved digging channels for the water to follow and involved getting our hands very muddy!

We started our week with a pine cone hunt around Chiswick House and Gardens and filled a big bag with all our finds. We were shocked by the size differences between the pine cones and tried to count how many we had found. We had more than thirty! We are transforming the pine cones into bird feeders by using bird seed and lard. We are hoping that this should keep the birds well fed while we are away over the Easter break when the Beast from the East returns!

We have really enjoyed drawing pictures this week. We used the book “Animalium” to choose our favourite animals and then draw a picture of them taking note of the shapes of the body and the features that we needed to draw. It was great to see the children representing the shapes of the head, body and limbs. We had a turtle sticking its head out of its shell, a mummy elephant hugging a baby elephant and snakes coiled around each other. Our interest in drawing has been continued in the forest as we use sticks to write letters and draw pictures in the dirt. Some of us have been practising the first letter in our name!

Little Forest Folk
Chiswick