Our Week in the Forest...
It has been a lovely stay and play week and a delight to have Mum's and Dad's, Grannies and Grandpas join us in the forest! The children have loved the opportunity to show parents around the forest and introduce them to all of their favourite activities. When the time came for our visitors to climb down from trees, put buckets and shovels away or crawl out of the story tent, there was notable disappointed that it was time to go back to ‘reality’.
One of the children's favourite activities this week was painting – we wrapped wallpaper around one of our biggest trees and the children soon set to work on decorating it. Some children chose to use the paint brushes, some tried using sticks instead, while others (it was probably obvious when you collected your child if yours was one of these children) chose to use their hands, painting not only the tree but most of themselves! This exploratory, experimental type of play is so important for the children, and each day we hope to provide an environment where the children feel confident enough to engage in this way.
We also looked more closely at numbers this week and our number treasure hunt has been requested regularly. Whilst the children were having their lunch, one of the practitioners would hide wooden discs with the numbers one to ten written on them around our forest. The children then hunted to find them, helping to correctly order them at the end. For some of the youngest children, it was about just becoming familiar with the symbols we use for numbers, while for our older children it was about being able to accurately name each symbol and order them correctly.
Two other highlights were making banana cream one afternoon and our play dough evening. The children yet again were enthusiastic about making their own food, measuring out quantities, learning the names of different ingredients and of course sampling it along the way.
We also had a play dough evening where children used cutters, rolling pins, and all sorts of other baking utensils, and again this sensory activity was one that had all the children hooked.
We’ve continued to look for worms, climb trees, play on swings, smell the flowers, collect conkers and do everything else that the children love doing so much in the forest; let’s hope there’s more of it next week!
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Have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham