We’ve been blessed with the most perfect weather this week, lovely and mild with plenty of sunshine. The mornings have been glorious and we’ve been feeling extra grateful for our access to the palace grounds/flower garden which have been visited daily on our autumn adventures.
This week we’ve had some autumnal themed fun, some spooky arts and crafts and lots of challenging balancing/climbing activities.
🏕️ Roasting Marshmallows at the Campfire
In true forest school fashion, we created a campsite-esque set up in a nice tree-covered spot. Children got to use the tree stumps to form a seated circle around what would be our ‘camp fire’. We used leaves and sticks to create a fire pit then got to work on our wooden-tipi. We used bamboo branches and rope to create a tripod which sat over the fire. Then we were ready to skewer our ‘marshmallows’ (leaves) onto sticks we had collected from camp. Children sat around the fire pit chatting away whilst their ‘marshmallows’ roasted away..then time to eat away!
🍂 Leaf Crafts
We have been celebrating all things autumn here at Fulham camp, particularly the wonderful array of colours. They’ve inspired some great crafts like leaf shape cutting, leaf collages, leaf fairies, leaf rubbings and leaf forest people! We’ve went leaf-mad! 🍃
🚙 Phonics Racetrack
To support our letter sounds and letter recognition targets, we had a brainstorm on how we can make this the most engaging for our little ones. We acknowledged that most children gravitate towards our small world role play, toy cars or train track- so of course, we merged the two! We used train track tape to map out the beginning letter/sound of the child’s first names. They got to visit ‘phonics village’ and search for their corresponding letter track. They then used a toy car to ride the shape, which is helping them become familiar with the formation of the letter, supporting their early writing skills.
🍁 Forest Bathing
We’ve been loving setting some time aside to have some truly mindful and calming moments in the forest each day. Our days can be packed full of movement, group play and music and singing, so it’s important we also make room for less stimulating activities which help our little ones to enjoy the calmer moments. We take a comfy blanket and hunt for new visually exciting spots around the grounds, sometimes under direct sky, or at other times under interesting branches and overhanging trees. We will get comfy and lie on our backs, appreciating the beauty around us. Some children like to discuss what they can see, the colour of the leaves, the shapes they can see in the clouds, or simply be silent and have some relaxing me-time.
🌈 Colour Monster Still Life
We’ve been working towards an ‘accuracy and detail’ learning goal within our mark making. We thought ‘what better than some classic still life drawing?’, where children can use observation skills to create a picture in response to the chosen object. We used our colour monster teddies to help inspire some exciting colour choices! Our Little Forest Folk-ers created fantastic images and had some great discussions about emotions!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham