Our Week in the Forest...
It has been lovely to have cooler temperatures in the forest this week, which has meant lots of running around and physical activity. The children helped to create two goals using stumps and got into teams to play a game of football. It was Croatia vs England and those who had more experience with the game explained the rules to the others such as ‘you can’t use your hands’ and ‘offside’. The children made sure to keep track of the score by marking with chalk on a piece of wood each time they scored.
The children have been creating inventive structures in and around the trees using ropes, branches, cable reels and stumps. They have been experimenting with various ways to attach and combine these elements and have created some very impressive knots. Many of these structures have been traps to capture the educators, and they were very hard to get out of! These creations have inspired the children’s play as they take on various roles as pirates, sloths and the PJ Mask team. Throughout they showed great team work and communication with one another, explaining to each other what they were doing and negotiating different roles and purposes in the play – ‘I’ll watch the hideout, whilst you go out and catch them.’
On Thursday we were excited to see the rain as our very dry forest desperately needed some water. The children talked about their plans to splash in puddles and make muddy potions. The children measured the rainfall using the cylinders, intermittently going back to check but they were soon overflowing as it rained all day long. They delighted in watching the pools of water, that collected in the tarps, splash to the ground when it became too heavy. They were aware of the changes the rain bought with it and spoke about how the tree was very slippery so they needed to be more careful when climbing. They also noticed how the ‘dust’ had turned to mud and they created patterns using the mud, making sure their hands got amazingly muddy.
The children got creative using natural resources to paint. They investigated the different strokes feathers made depending on the size and structure of the feathers, the children talked about which birds the feathers came from using the ‘iSPY birds’ book to help them verify. The children used leaves as stamps and sticks to create dot patterns.
As always it was great to have some of our forest school leavers and siblings visiting for holiday camp. It is always lovely to see how comfortable they appear in the forest, immediately getting involved and getting their hands muddy. It is also great to see how kind and patient the other children are when explaining the rules, showing children round the forest and welcoming new children into their play.
Little Forest Folk
Fulham