Oh, what a pleasure it has been to welcome new friends into the forest community, some returning faces, some new curious campers and of course our all year round Little Forest Folk-ers who get to soak up the excitement of these busy two weeks. Holiday camp is a super special time for us, as we get to welcome the Fulham community in to experience the joy of outdoor learning. It’s always a vital opportunity for our OG adventurers, as they get to tour their new buddies around camp, reinforce our forest rules and promote the kindness and care for nature and our friends which is so fundamental to our Little Forest Folk life. We packed the week full of interesting, challenging and creative activities ready for all ages. I must say, we had a whole lot of fun!
“Understand important processes and changes in the natural world” 🌍
Our Natural Environment 🌦️
Our full day Little Forest Folk-ers have been exploring the systems and processes we find in the world around us. A very important one which influences our forest experience is the ever-changing cycle of the weather. We used a repurposed sheet to draw the map of Britain, highlighting key areas across the space. The children were challenged to be forecast predictors, pulling information from their lived experience and making calculated guesses. Have we been to the seaside before? Was it a little windy? Why could this be? As we have just cycled into Spring, what weather would we expect from Central London? Our little adventurers had wonderful, insightful conversations and used markers to draw the weather onto portions of the map.
Our Physical Environment 🚆
As well as our natural environment, we use and experience systems and processes in our everyday lives, some of which are man-made. These are equally as important and interesting to the human experience and are a perfect inspiration for a fun day of real-world role play. As it was a big hit last time, we again transformed our campsite into Putney Bridge Station, fit with its own Oyster Card reader, lines to change at and walkie talkies for the drivers and workers. Our Little Forest Folk-ers were given Oyster Cards and got to plan their journey. Should we change at the Northern or Jubilee Line? I fancy visiting Hyde Park to see the duck pond, or how about the Lily Pads in Kew Gardens? How do we get there? Our campers loved this activity and took on the many roles of the TFL team.
“Describe what we see, hear and feel whilst outside” 🦢
Egg Hunt 🐣
Provided by the wonderful workers of Fulham Palace, we got to explore the palace grounds on a magic hunt to find the hidden Easter eggs. These were not any old Easter Eggs, but ones that were part of a secret egg scramble! Each egg was printed with a letter, which when un-jumbled, became an answer to a tricky question. We were super impressed with the letter recognition, sound identification and oral blending that we heard whilst out on this trip. It was great to watch our 3&4-year-olds work together with our older 6&7-year-olds to put their knowledge together. For example, our Little Forest Folk-ers were superb at spotting; “look! There’s a c c c” , whereas our older campers could decipher the words by placing them together. ‘c h, ch, choco! I think it’s going to say chocolate!’ It was a real marrying of ideas, experiences and knowledge, we love witnessing the magic of children learning from each other!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham