Our Week in the Forest...
This week in the forest there has been such a variety of activities and experiences at Fulham, and we’re constantly amazed at the ideas your children come up with!
One of the experiences we enjoyed was when our forest turned into yet another typical high street in London; it was impossible to walk more than a few yards without coming across another new coffee shop. It started with one child setting up a stall full of sticks, stones, leaves, berry juice and mud before calling out to the rest of the children that his shop was open. It didn’t take long for a number of other children to find their own logs to use as coffee shops. At times, the flavour of the coffee and cake was questionable, however the same could not be said about your children’s imaginations. Not only were our little economists, entrepreneurs and business men and women using their imagination skills, but they also had to engage with negotiating, problem solving, mathematical knowledge and lots of communication. It was yet again another great example of how as educators, we so rarely have to provide the stimuli, instead needing to be open and prepared for the ideas the children provide.
It has also been a week of splish, splash, sploshing in the huge muddy puddles and catching the rain on our tongues. The children have been making the most of the rainy weather, catching water from the tarps, flicking the droplets from the leaves, and generally getting as muddy as possible.
Literacy has also been prevalent in the forest this week through lots of storytelling. It’s nice that after a busy day of selling coffee and having to deal with tricky customers, children are then able to put their feet up, relax and listen to a story. Throughout the week stories progressed from simply being read from books where children could use the pictures to help them follow the story, to then being made up by the educators. The children showed great listening and concentration skills to remain engaged in these stories despite just having their imaginations to go by. Towards the end of the week the children were playing a crucial role in these stories coming up with characters and settings. It was exciting to see how some of the children were beginning to grasp how stories are formed with a setting, characters, beginning, middle and end.
Those who didn’t fancy the hustle and bustle of the coffee shops, but wanted a little more thrill than stories spent a large amount of time being monkeys hanging upside down from our slackline. The ‘failed zipline project’ turned out to be something that amused the children for hours and they showed lots of strength, coordination and bravery. Initially using it to swing from, to then use it like monkey bars moving from one end to the other, before lastly hanging from it, hooking their legs over and then shuffling across the line. Again we are constantly amazed at just how capable the children are, in so many different aspects.
We hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Little Forest Folk
Fulham