Our Week in the Forest...
Once again, we have experienced all four seasons in one week, we have felt the warm sunshine upon our faces, collected the rain in our teapots and caught the leaves playing in the wind. The children adapt so amazingly well to the constantly changing weather through their play, making the most of these natural resources each and every day.
There has been a continuing fascination with the abundance of wildlife throughout the palace gardens with discoveries under every tree stump, log and among the plants. We have been observing the difference in size from the tiny little ants and baby woodlice to the big ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ slugs, snails, worms and centipedes. We were also fortunate enough to discover our first stag beetle this year, sitting quietly on the side of a tree. After carefully collecting the beetle, Marlon showed it to everyone during our circle time. Everyone waited so patiently as he showed it to each and every child, generating questions galore about where it’s eyes were located, how many legs it had and whether it was vegetarian!! They were all fascinated by it and so were the educators! We continued to show the children the stag beetle throughout the day, discussing what it might eat and how it was quite a slow-moving bug.
We also introduced a new tool this week called a ‘froe’, another type of tool used for splitting pieces of wood. As with our previous activities during which the children used the billhook to produce printing blocks they were shown how this similarly splits wood into different shapes. We discussed how a split into two semi-circles, a semi-circle then splits into two triangles, and if you put them all back together it once again makes a circle. Following on from this the children selected a random wooden shape that had been painted as part of our shape and colour game, this highlighted not only their growing knowledge of colours and shapes but also how incredibly attentive and cooperative they are when participating together. Then due to popular demand the pinion drills had to come out to make these into magical necklaces, watches of invisibility and superpower bracelets.
Music is always in the air and this week was no exception with the children creating their own band inside the tipi. The children experimented with every material they could find and explored the different sounds they could make! This abundance of ‘percussion’ instruments were then transformed into an obstacle course with Arturo helping them to navigate their way over, under and through the obstacles.
We wish you all a lovely holiday weekend and we are looking forward to more creative activities next week along with the warmer weather.
Little Forest Folk
Fulham