Hello everyone!
The end of another week is here and I am excited to tell you how much fun we’ve been having! It has been so nice to be outside in the sunshine and for our little onions to start peeling off all their winter layers. However, this does mean we now need to protect ourselves against the sun with hats and sun cream. If we could please also ask you to ensure that your child attends with a full bottle of water so that they remain hydrated throughout the day. We have introduced regular ‘water breaks’ to encourage regular drinking outside of mealtimes.
To keep cool this week, we made our own card windmills using pipe cleaners. We enjoyed testing them out and seeing if they worked in the slight breeze on camp.
This week we have been focusing our activities on families as our ‘Special occasions’ noticeboard informed us that it was ‘International Day of Families’ on the 15th May. With many of the arts and crafts activities, we aimed to create conversations around members of our family who live with us and where other family members live. For example, using felt tip pens and coloured card we asked the children to draw round their hand and cut it out. On each of the fingers they were encouraged to draw a family member or themselves. Similarly on another day we used the card in a creative way, folding it carefully and cutting out a template of a person. When finished this created a row of ‘Paper dolls’ which they could decorate. We also laid out a large world map for the group to look at and discuss places they have visited with their family or where family members live. One child enjoyed telling an educator that her auntie and uncle lived in Australia! Later they used paper plates and greens and blues to paint their own maps.
As the usual response to questions about what their Mummy or Daddy does is ‘Works on their computer’ or ‘Goes to the office’ we decided to set up our own workplace, complete with cubicles, desks, laptops and mobile phones. I am not sure that much constructive work got done but it looked like a lot of fun! What a lot of busy bees!
Speaking of bees, we have also been observing the butterflies and bees that have begun to visit our site. Based on this interest we brought out our butterfly and bee dressing-up costumes. Many of the Little Forest Folk-ers took turns to act out being bees, buzzing around collecting pollen. Afterwards, the bees headed to the mud kitchen to distribute honey to put into porridge and onto toast!
Let’s hope this nice weather is with us for a while and we hope you have a nice weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham