Our Week in the Forest...
No Picking and No Licking: Learning about wild mushrooms!
This Autumn we seem to have had the perfect weather to encourage the growth of wild mushrooms, as they have been popping up all over our forests, both in Kew Gardens and Chiswick House and Gardens! It has provided a fantastic opportunity to teach our Little Forest Folk-ers some of the exciting things that grow in our environment but also the dangers in our forest, emphasising one of our 5 rules, which is 'No Picking and No Licking'.
We have a great variety of mushrooms in the forest, some which are safe to touch but some which aren’t. So, to avoid any confusion we have a firm rule of never touching any of the mushrooms. Instead, we provide opportunities for the children to study them from a safe distance, looking at their shape, colour and size. The children have been very quick to take on this information and it was quite lovely hearing one child say, "Mushrooms from the shop I eat, wild mushroom from forest can be poisonous so I don’t" as he told his friends each time we came across any new ones. The fantastic thing about mushrooms is the speed in which they grow and their alien appearance compared to the rest of the forest. We often talk about how our 'outdoor classroom' can change on a day to day basis and these mushrooms have been a good example of that!
As well as being in awe of the wonderfully strange natural phenomena in our forest, the children have also been busy constructing. When clearing through some of the resources on our inset day, we came across some wooden poles that would be perfect to make small dens or tripods, and this week we decided to take them out into the forest. When the children saw the poles, their imaginations instantly ignited and there were lots of ideas being suggested such as, "We should make a rocket", "I'm going to make a house", "Let’s make a den”!
Our Little Forest Folk-ers decided on making a den and asked the educators for some ropes and string to help facilitate their construction plans. We began by using a wooden mallet to knock in some of our wooden poles into the ground, these formed a strong foundation for the children to work from, and also was a fun activity to do as they took it in turns. The activity grew and dominated the children's play for the whole afternoon session. They must have enjoyed it because the next day, those who had been there the day before, asked to do the same thing. So, we took out the resources, decided on what we were going to build and then started constructing! This sense of almost project-based learning, and revisiting past ideas and thoughts is such a great opportunity that allows the children to plan, assess and evaluate as they go, and they often try to improve on their previous builds. It’s also lots of fun for the educators, challenging them to see how they can help with their creative input.
Next week is holiday camp, so we wish all our sessional children a lovely half term and we look forward to welcoming the holiday campers!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick