Reading, painting, and climbing!
We hope you all had a fantastic week. We’ve been so excited to see familiar faces and some new faces this week in the forest. The weather has been kind and mild so far and the occasional rain makes the conditions extra special to play outdoors!
Our biggest hit this week, has been the amazing obstacle course! The children have to balance on the serpent logs, cross the bridge with a river of hungry crocodiles underneath and climb the mountain. Then, they must come down the mountain on the other side and walk on squares that keep them safe from the hot lava and then finally, back to the beginning!
It was so exciting, that managing to keep a safe space from the next person and waiting for their turn was sometimes hard, but with the help of our wonderful educators, our little adventures had their go, over and over again!
The mud kitchen was super slippery and extra fun this week! The children absolutely loved making potions, measuring cups of water to mix with dry soil and made mud cakes, mud pies and mud cookies.
On the art station, black, white, and red paint were used to decorate spooky ghosts, sparkly pipe cleaners as legs for creepy spiders and out of this world aliens! Using glue to stick glow in the dark googly eyes, sticks and other materials, the children’s creations were outstanding!
The children made swords and ice shooting lasers to use in their imaginary play, chasing baddies and becoming superheroes. This led to a very enlightening debate at lunch time each day - ‘What do superheroes eat?’. Interestingly, we concluded that Hulk definitely eats broccoli and Spiderman eats carrots! Maybe it’s the colours, or maybe our children really know what they are talking about! We talked about the importance of eating healthy and in small bites, a little bit at a time.
Reading and mark making was very popular. From the various books we brought to the forest, ‘Winnie the Witch’, ‘Room on The Broom’ were the most requested by the children this week. We saw letters and numbers in cardboard, on benches and pallets, written by some of the older holiday campers, and the younger children were copying, wanting to have their own names on their artwork as well!
Teaching all children about the forest rules is so important. They learn how to keep themselves safe, they self-risk-assess what they should or shouldn’t do, and they remind each other every day of the rules such as ‘No picking & no licking’ and ‘Stop! And come back’ if a child is close to a rainbow ribbon. Our children learn from a young age how to be independent, confident, and resilient while being outdoors in all weather and exposed to the elements. They learn to listen to their bodies and express their needs to an educator. Isn’t it special!
We hope you all have a fabulous weekend and see you all next week!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham