Our Week in the Forest...
Woodwork and Construction
This week we have seen the children become carpenters and builders, putting their amazing skills to use during our forest school activities involving bowsaws, palm drills and ropes.
To start the week off the children were making their own leaf prints! To do this activity there are several steps. To begin with, each child takes a turn to ‘dual’ saw two discs of wood using a bowsaw with their educator. Dual sawing is a fantastic way of building the children’s confidence while safely using exciting tools. After the children have cut their discs, they are asked to then explore the forest to find a leaf or flower that doesn’t exceed the diameter of their disc. Once a flower or leaf has been found, the child then places their object between two discs and then binds them together using an elastic band. Then the leaf prints can be taken home to look after. After a few weeks the elastic band can be removed and from the pressure of it pressing the leaf/flower a print will be made on each disc!
The children enjoyed the dual sawing so much on Monday that we decided to carry it on throughout the week but with the aim of making other things, such as coins, medals and “forest biscuits”. The discs have now developed into a currency that the children could acquire and spend on things such as getting their face painted. It has given great opportunity to talk about monetary value and numeracy, as well as the physical development opportunities of using tools! Our forest campsite is now scattered with wooden discs for the children to play with.
Alongside our woodwork the children have also taken the role of builders and engineers. This week we have built a boat, treehouse and car to name just a few. The children have started collecting wood during the walks into the forest to use for these construction projects. Each project is completed as a group and with the educators’ encouragement the children problem-solve ways of making “engines/wheels” from logs and “tail lights” from bright coloured flowers. The children have become very resourceful in using our natural surroundings and it is fantastic to see such big construction projects happening and resulting in exciting play areas for imaginative road trips or treasure hunts.
We aim to support this learning over the coming weeks through the introduction of some different tools and to teach them further skills that they can apply in their imaginary play across the setting.
New Little Forest Folk settings
As you will have seen in our communications last week, we are delighted that Little Forest Folk Wandsworth will be opening this summer- it's been a long time in the making!
We'll be launching with sessional days only whilst we prepare for our full day offering which we hope to offer a little later in the year.
Our Little Forest Folk Wandsworth children will spend their days at two wonderful forest sites:
On Mondays and Fridays at Paradise Co-op Urban Farm.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the wilds of Wimbledon Common.
For more details visit the Wandsworth web page here
We're so excited that Little Forest Folk Barnes is also coming soon! We'll be in touch next week to share more information with you.
Food in the forest:
Our full May menu can be found on our website HERE
We're enjoying these new Cheese and Linseed Pinwheels, our morning snack on Wednesdays.
Puff pastry, covered in lashings of mature cheddar cheese and linseeds.
Rolled, chopped into pinwheels and baked in a hot oven...
until the cheese is golden and bubbling. YUM!
We hope you have a lovely weekend.
Little Forest Folk
Fulham
