Our Week in the Forest...
We’ve had a lovely week filled with lots of forest school activities. One activity, the children have continued to enjoy and build upon, quite literally, was the construction of mini parks. The children were given a small piece of paracord to use as the perimeter for their park before foraging for items they could use inside it. They started off by collecting natural things from our base camp; feathers, leaves, stones, sticks etc. until one child decided to use some of the resources we take to the forest every day. Soon there were pots, pans, jugs, teapots, plates and spoons from the mud kitchen which was used as slides, swimming pools, cafes and many other things. Throughout the activity, children who worked together had to discover ways of compromising to decide on designs that they were both happy with and everyone tested their creativity building evermore impressive parks.
The children also made ‘rainbow bands’. On the walk to base camp, the children were given card with sticky tape on it. The younger children enjoyed sticking whatever they wanted to it, while the older children were tasked with finding all the colours of the rainbow. The forest has so much colour in it at the minute that there was an abundance of things to choose from, however discovering that enormous sticks and stones won’t stick very well, was a tough lesson for some to learn.
To continue our creative theme, we have painted EVERYTHING in the forest! Rolls of paper have been wrapped around trees and logs, on top of tarpaulin and hung from branches. Everyone has experimented with mixing colours, drawing pictures or painting letters.
Letters have been a big focus this week and the children have really enjoyed playing with our alphabet tree cookies. Throughout the week the smaller children have enjoyed just playing with them, helping them to become familiar with the symbols, while the older children have enjoyed finding the letter that their names begin with or some have even been able to spell out whole words. Having these tree cookies readily available for the children to use on a regular basis has meant letters have infiltrated their everyday activities. When the children have been painting, rather than just painting pictures they now enjoy trying to paint their names, the names of their family members or their friend’s names.
This week the children have also observed how, when all the hairs have been removed, stingy nettles can be used to make bracelets, and found it funny to hear how they can be used for soup or tea. We have been practising throwing and catching with the new swing ball and because of the hot weather spent lots and lots of time in the mud kitchen. It’s been a fab week and we look forward to seeing you again next week for more of the same!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham