Our Week in the Forest...
It’s been a glorious day in the forest with the temperatures soaring to highs of 27 degrees and the children have welcomed the change in weather. The gloves, hats, extra woolly socks and winter waterproofs have been exchanged with shorts, t-shirts and summer waterproofs – perfect for playing with cool water in the mud kitchen.
It’s been the first week back for many of the children following the Easter holidays, so snack time on Monday morning was full of exciting stories being shared of what everyone got up to over the holidays. Many Easter eggs left by the Easter bunny were hunted, some went away on holiday, some visited beaches and others who stayed with us over the two weeks shared what they did in the forest. The children’s enthusiasm was just as high as the temperatures and many had suggestions about what they were excited to do. Sawing, drilling, face painting and the bouncy swings were some of the suggestions made. It’s great to see the children so confident with using the tools now and making links with the skills they’ve learnt and being able to think of other things they would like to make using those skills. They began by making tree cookies and spinning tops and have progressed to wanting to make wooden cars and giraffes! The sky is the limit with their imagination!
Following the theme of pirate face paints, this week many have been hunting the forest for pirate treasure, creating their own treasure maps drawn on leaves and searching for the X which marks the spot of gold coins! Others have been busy digging tunnels, often returning back to continue digging the same tunnel in the hope that they will too find the pirate treasure.
All in all, it’s been an enjoyable week for the children and the educators. We’ve adapted our resources to create more challenging structures, for example by fixing the slackline higher up in the trees and attaching multiple rope swings of different heights in order to create bouncing swings. It’s been nice having less to set up in the morning and focussing more on the children’s requests and arranging things according to their daily interests. Hopefully the warmer weather will be here to stay and new, fun and exciting activities will continue to be requested!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham