What a week it has been! Thunder and lightning, hail and rain, sunshine and wind; we’ve seen it all! Spring is such an engaging time of year, as our plants and animals are in rebirth, the weather is wild and unpredictable, and everything feels fresh and exciting.
This week has been a busy one and here at Chiswick we’ve been doing what we do best: playing, creating and learning together, all day, whatever the weather. Paper plates were on show again, each with numbers painted on, inviting children to match them to groups of found objects from around the forest. After we were done counting, we decorated the plates and made wondrous masks. There have been tigers, dragons and faeries masquerading all over! Both number and letter recognition are going well in the woods, some of the children have been practicing their alphabets too. We’ve had a go writing out each letter, learning the strokes that take to build the character and what it looks like, and seeing if we can think of words that begin with them. To add a bit of flavour to our alphabet writing we had a go at illustrating these words.
In other literacy news our helicopter stories (where a child dictates a story from their imagination to an educator who scribes it word for word) have been wowing children and educators alike! We’ve been on the edge of our logs hearing the twists and turns of these stories. Our quality book selection, daily reading and constant imaginative play seems to have given our adventurers great storytelling abilities! Writing your own stories isn’t just fantastic for communication and language, it also does wonders for self-confidence and concentration.
Earlier in the week we were treated to a rapturous thunder and lightning display, which was very exciting. This does usually mean we need to evacuate as trees aren’t the best things to be near in a thunderstorm. However, every bump on the road is an opportunity for learning; there was much discussion on how lightning actually works, why the flash comes before the sound, and how there was hail when it was nowhere near freezing. We were all impressed with how calm the children were in spite of the stormy weather; we evacuated quickly and sensibly. For the rest of the day, we enjoyed our time indoors with creative activities of painting, building and reading. We even customised some of our building blocks with signature paints and drawings.
Yesterday we had a lovely trip to the kitchen garden of Chiswick House. We were invited by the gardeners to help plant some of their potatoes in their fruit and vegetable plantations, check out the bug hotel and see how our food is made! We learned the difference between soil and compost, how potatoes sprout and reproduce and how to best care for our plants and environment. Each child had their own potato and will be returning to see how they are getting on, good luck spuds, and thanks gardeners!
Have a wonderful weekend all, thanks for another cracking week!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick