Our Week in the Forest...
This week it was the children’s turn to bring in their favourite books, and what an amazing selection of great stories we have heard. Each day we have been on incredible adventures, discovered magical places and people and even learned some interesting new facts. We have had some traditional fairy tales; stories that involved giants and jellybeans; a series about Max the kitten and even one about a kite that was stuck in a tree. It has been lovely to listen to the children tell us why they had chosen a particular book and to then share their enjoyment of the book with their friends.
Possibly inspired by all the adventure stories, the children have been particularly curious about exploring Fulham Palace Gardens throughout the week so we have been on plenty of adventure walks and visited some familiar spaces from the past. The children were fascinated to see that at our old nursery setting mushrooms had grown where we used to have the mud kitchen, and tiny snow drops were pushing though the soil where we used to have our log circle. This led us to discuss all about how things change over time and why we had moved our nursery around the gardens.
There is such a sense of belonging and ownership among the children, they know the gardens so well and observe the tiniest of details and changes in the environment. When they came across some areas that used to be their ‘old favourites’ we could overhear them talking about what games they played and new ideas that they had, along with testing things out again. They all wanted to see if they still had what it takes to make the leap across the hay bales!
Whilst on our travels around the garden, the children also observed the big beautiful fox that sometimes wanders past us. One of the children mentioned that they knew where the fox’s house was located so we decided to go and take a look. We followed her along the windy path as she led us to the fox’s den. Once there, we walked very quietly to where a big hole was located in the ground, each child taking a turn to have a little peek inside to see if Mr or Mrs Fox were home. Some of the children also asked about why they couldn’t go too close so we discussed about the importance of not frightening the forest animals.
We hope you all have lovely weekends and cannot wait to see what next week brings!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham