“We always check the weather forecast in the morning!”
The wet weather on Tuesday prompted lots of conversations about the forecast. As the children ate their snack, some of them talked about checking the forecast before coming to forest school. By doing this they know what clothes to bring and whether or not to wear wellies to splash in puddles! On Tuesday the forecast was rain all day and boy did our wellies come in handy!
Not only were the children splashing in the puddles, but adding to our arrangement of logs, planks and benches that acted as bridges and stepping stones to get over the puddles. It was great to see groups of children working together to lift up wooden planks and show us their muscles when rolling over logs. Educators were stopped many times by the children saying, “Look how strong I am!”. Together with the educators, the children demonstrated their ability to risk assess and feel for themselves how secure and steady their bridges were. If some were too wobbly, we worked together to move it into a position that felt safe.
A group of our older boys used the stepping stones and bridges as a way of getting to work. They went back and forth with handfuls of found materials. Nothing could distract them from all the jobs they had to complete. Tucked away behind our line of backpacks was the office space where they worked on computers, laptops, and phones…busy, busy busy!
Our pallets were stacked one on top of the other for the children to climb on. Ladles of water were being transported from the mud kitchen to the top of the pallet where a pipe was positioned on a slope to allow water to travel from the top to the bottom. Children held a bucket to catch the water using a trial and error method to position it just right so the greatest amount of water was collected.
The other main theme for the week has been songs and music! Every day we have been singing new songs in our log circle, at lunch time or on our walk back to the tennis courts for the full day children. Florence taught us all a song about saying hello in different languages and some of the children really enjoyed being able to tell us how they say hello in Spanish and German. Another popular song has been our bonfire night song. Usually it involves going to the firework shop to buy rockets, bangers and sparklers but this week the children came up with their own items to buy and the actions to go along with them. They bought dinosaurs that went “ROAR”, ballet shoes that went “bounce”, cows that went “moo” and mermaids that went swimming!
The favourite book of the week has been, ‘The boy who unplugged the sea.’ The children casted their votes as they sat down for lunch and though ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ got 6 votes, ‘The Boy who unplugged the Sea’ was the clear winner with 11! Many of the children wanted to look closely at the illustrations of the sandcastles in the story and imagined building one for themselves using sand pebbles, sticks, feathers and flags. So, if anyone is planning a trip to the beach anytime soon we hope you get the chance to build a sandcastle just like Marcel did in the story…just remember not to build it too close to the sea like he did!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham