Monsters galore
We have had such a fantastic week in the forest! Our Little Forest Folk-ers were busier than usual pretending to be friendly monsters and letting their imagination run wild!
One of their favourite activities this week was making their own monster, but without seeing the monster’s face. We had huge pieces of cardboard cut in shapes of monsters and the children had to stick the eyes, mouth, and nose and sometimes eyebrows (as many as they liked) on the monster’s face but from behind the cardboard. Oh, that was so much fun! Especially because we all realised that their arms were actually a bit too small to go around the cardboard so eyes and mouths would frequently end up on shoulders and tentacles! But of course, our children love a challenge so that didn’t stop them from having a laugh once they saw the result!
They made slimy monsters with foam and flour, exploring their senses as they mixed the materials together. Our Little Forest Folk-ers have been enjoying our sensory activities and it’s wonderful to see them touching their little hands and feel the softness of their skin or smell the scent that comes from the mixture.
We also had 4 gigantic monsters on the stage drawn with colourful chalk. The monsters had points below them, and the children had to stay in a square and throw bean bags at the monsters to get the points! Wow, that was fun! The children patiently took turns and waited for their turn, then they gathered all their strength and aimed at the monsters’ heads (for extra points!).
On our adventure walks to the forest, the children saw lots of mushrooms growing in a tree nearby and reminded each other that mushrooms can be poisonous, and we shouldn’t step on them or touch them 🍄. They saw little daffodils and snowdrops growing all over the gardens and 2 beautiful cherry blossom trees in the walled garden. As the white petals fell from the tree dancing in the wind, our children tried catching some and said, “It’s like snow!” as they were looking up to the tree.
On the obstacle course this week, we had a natural extra challenge added to the level of difficulty- muddy ground and slippery logs, so our adventurers took extra caution and kept risk assessing their abilities in a particularly harder course! They were absolutely brilliant at moving pieces around, making safer paths for them to move across and ending no less than big splashy puddles!
In the mud kitchen we had magic potions and concoctions that could transform anyone into a monster! Special recipes that were carefully prepared with squashy slime, smelly socks, and rotten eggs! Yum yum!
We celebrated world book day reading some of our favourite books to the children. They told us about their favourite characters and favourite books that they read at home. ‘Winnie the Witch’, ‘The Highway Rat’, ‘Supertato’, were some of the stories chosen by the children!
We ended the week with our wild cooking day and the children really enjoyed making ratatouille! Cutting vegetables, smelling the herbs, and learning about healthy eating was a huge success, as always! Our children absolutely love to participate in our cooking sessions, and we bet that they are great helpers at home too! Or at least at eating the food in the end, especially if it’s cake!
We would like to invite the children to bring a friend to the forest next week. It can be a cuddly toy, a favourite doll or robot! We will have picnic with our friends in the forest and have lots of imaginative play! Please to explain to your little one that whichever friend he decides to bring, he will have to look after it in the muddy forest and keep it safe!
We hope you have a fabulous weekend exploring!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham