This week we have been fostering a love of reading here at Little Forest Folk Fulham, creating some engaging reading corners and basing our forest set ups around some popular children’s literature 📚
Our brilliant educator Maria led a fantastic group story time filled with real-life props one morning. She read the great Sally and the Limpet, a story with a powerful message about caring for the sea creatures around us. The story reminds us that it’s best to keep creatures in their natural habitats, which links with our rules/approach to bug/insect handling here at camp. Maria made the story come to life, pairing the story with real sea creature sounds played through the speaker, and a shell to pass around the circle, holding it to our ear to hear the sounds of the ocean. 🌊 Our little adventurers used great descriptive language to explore what they could see and hear.
We had a similar ocean-theme with a The Snail and the Whale 🐳 themed day, where the entire camp was transformed in response to the themes of the book. Here at Fulham, we love to have engaging story times which are then fed into the children’s play, to really allow our Little Forest Folk-ers to explore and consolidate the key themes within their own play preferences. There was a sea creature investigation station 🐟 where children could look through looking glasses and microscopic containers at an array of creatures. They strengthened their fine motor abilities by using a controlled pincer grip to pinch the animals with pincers, picking them up and transferring them into containers. There was a brilliant fire engine kitted out with wheels, “fire extinguishers” and “hose pipes”. The children absolutely loved this, and took it in turns driving the vehicle 🚒 sounding out the siren sounds!🚨
We also explored some independence strengthening activities, where educator Sabrina led a brilliant fruit cutting activity, supporting particularly our younger adventurers to explore some focused fine motor motions. Children were shown how to use one hand to keep the fruit steady, whilst their dominant hand could slice back and forth steadily. 🍌
What a wonderful week, we hope you all have a lovely restful weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham