Our Week in the Forest...
Our chilly mornings in the forest this week have been full of discovery and joy. Faces of amazement looked up at us as the children lifted up huge pieces of ice that they discovered, whilst others crunched and stomped in the frosted grass outside Fulham palace. The fun had only just begun! We embarked on a lot of adventure walks this week which gave the children the opportunity to witness the transformation of the gardens. It has been a pleasure to take the children past our old camp locations and to continue to use them for short-term play areas. On our adventures, the children noticed that snowdrops were popping up, the buds were appearing on the trees and we also bumped into the Palace gardeners and discussed with them what work they were doing. The children noticed that they were coppicing trees which were the perfect size for sawing and making tree cookies, so after some negotiation the gardeners offered to keep some aside for us to collect, before the bodgers noticed the wood!
Later that day, Marlon took a smaller group of children to go and collect the freshly cut wood with the trolley. This of course involved plenty of teamwork, particularly with pushing the trolley and loading it up with as much wood as they could take. It was remarkable to observe how as a group they were able to lift longer pieces of wood and direct each other so that they could safely place it on to the trolley.
This week in the forest the children have really been showing off their creativity through painting and drawing in the forest. Some of the children have suggested a larger painting area so we are aiming, in the coming weeks, to upscale their canvas in the forest ‘Christo’ style! Their creative interests even continued into our cookery lesson during which the children drew some ‘still lifes’ of the bowls of fruit. They carefully observed the colours, textures and shapes of the fruit and used colouring pencils to draw what they could see, there are definitely some Cezanne’s in the making!
After they were content with their masterpieces, Jo introduced them to our new children’s cooking knives. After explaining to the children how to use the knives safely, they chose fruit from their bowls and cut it for the fruit salad. The children loved discovering what was inside when they cut the papaya and orange, they felt the melon and pineapple, comparing their texture and tasted all the different fruit. When they had finished they proudly took their fruit salad home to share with their families, or at least some of it…
We hope you all have lovely weekends and will see you next week for more forest fun!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham