Mud, mud and more mud! Just how we like it in the forest. Huge volumes of rain have softened our ground and made some deliciously squidgy mud for the children to sink their fingers into and some of our puddles have been wonderfully deep for making dramatic splashes.
The children seem to have been focusing in on details this week, with the bug hunting bug truly catching hold. They have been working in pairs or teams to lift or roll some of our larger logs and marvelling at the chubby worms underneath “ooooooh, that’s a juicy one!”. Upon making a discovery they gather round, crouching or kneeling close so that they can better observe what they have found, negotiating with each other to make space and needing only minimal support to manage this. There is often a quiet spell of watching before they start to voice their observations or muse over who the worms are, what they might be doing or where they might be going. Often they are assigned family roles and occasionally names and they are lifted with careful fingers to lay flat on the palm of a hand. Such a simple activity is such a wonderful opportunity for the children to expand on their vocabulary and with their focus peaked we can use our conversations to incorporate new words to describe what we can see.
Describing the simple movements of a worm can incorporate words such as stretching, twisting, curling, wriggling, pressing, movements of forwards, and backwards as well as talking about handling it gently so as not to scare it or hurt its soft body. This close up wonder and careful interaction encourages empathy and it is so lovely to see how the children invariably then wish to create a special and safe place for the worm to live in where it will be protected. We have had the most wonderfully intricate worm house and bug hotels with beds and extra mud for it “to play in” and more beds added for the rest of its family. Collaboration is key as this play progresses and we start to see skills such as delegation, sharing, conveying ideas and incorporating the ideas of others as they work together to create the perfect home.
Footprints have started to hold interest as well if the children discover a particularly clear one and then turn detectives by asking us to make a print alongside so they can work out who it belongs to.
We have explored the idea of mixing colours with white paint as well this week to look at the variety of shades that can be made. The gardeners gifted us a trimmed back Christmas tree to play with and the children decided to decorate it with a particularly bright shade of green that they had made together.
With such giant puddles on site we have had fun building bridges and obstacle courses to cross the rivers and oceans in camp and the children have used ramps, stepping logs, pallets and benches to travel from one side to the other. One team even constructed a slide from the stage to the floor and they had a fantastic time using their bodies in different ways to slide down forwards, backwards, sideways or on their tummies.
It’s been a beautiful week with so much laughter and fun and I can’t wait to see what next week brings.
Little Forest Folk
Fulham