Our Week in the Forest...
This has been an exciting week with the half term holiday camp taking place. We have had a lovely mixture of familiar faces and new friends to play in the forest and each day has brought changes in dynamics, ideas, creativity and energy levels!
We have been braced for Storm Dennis and his blustery friends but have been lucky enough to simply enjoy gusty days that blow away our cobwebs and shake some wonderful natural resources down from the trees overnight.
At the beginning of the week, our Little Forest Folk-ers were determined to capture all the “baddies” and (here’s the twist) it turns out that some of those baddies were the educators! The scandal! We were rounded up and thrown into prison with sentences such as “50 years! And no toys allowed!”, “A million years in snake prison!”. Of course, being the dastardly criminals that we are, we would escape from prison resulting in high speed chases all over camp, jumping over logs, dodging around bushes and trying to hide from our pursuing police force. This concept was expanded on by Gemma who challenged the kids to construct a prison strong enough to hold these baddies and they leapt on the idea with gusto. A basic design was decided on, with the children being supported in making their own decisions and they gathered pallets, planks and ropes to work together as a team.
We decided to leave this structure standing to see what would become of it the next day and it inspired others to role play at construction where they scooped sludgy mud and transported it in bowls to act as mortar between planks and as glue to stick on decorations. Some of our children chose to pick up our clipboards and write some stories of their own that ranged in topic from parties and police chases to super heroes and magic potions. They were so fantastic that we created a stage space on the centre of the log circle at snack time and all the children had a chance to take a turn at acting different parts as Katie read the stories to the group.
We had an exciting moment one day when the gardeners stopped by to show us some of the slides from their beehives that they had extracted. Gemma used to keep bees on a farm and was able to explain all about how it worked, the different jobs of the bees and the children demonstrated their own knowledge and understanding too. The hive had failed and the beekeepers explained that they were sending away some samples to be analysed so that they could find out what had gone wrong and whether the remaining hives might need some help. It was fascinating and our Little Forest Folk-ers really loved being able to see the honeycomb up close.
Face painting has proved very popular and it’s always great to see the children personify the identity they chose to be painted as. We have had races through giant puddles, ice cream and lollipop making in the mud kitchen, collaborative painting activities, listening to stories, nest making and even flag painting.
Our regular children have utterly taken it in their stride having all these new faces around them and have demonstrated their fantastic confidence, joining in with games, showing new friends where things can be found and chatting away like nothing has changed. We have loved having some older siblings, some of whom used to spend time in the forest with us before going on to school and others who have simply decided to come and join in the fun! Our new kids were so fun to get to know and keen to join in with the laughter and silliness. What a fantastic, muddy, sunny, wet, and windy week!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham