This week’s holiday camp has been a hoot!
The gardeners brought us cut flowers to play with and Claudia set to work with some of them to make flower crowns for everybody. Later in the week we used sellotape and glue to attach gathered items from the forest floor as well as brightly coloured feathers and googly eyes to create paper crowns and head-dresses as individual as their makers!
Harriet busied herself with hand tying a cargo net from some of our old rope and when it was spread out between logs the children transformed it into the Batmobile! High speed chases ensued and additions were added using sticks and logs to adapt it to the evolving needs of the game.
We walked to the Adventure Playground in the mornings to take advantage of the many balancing and jumping challenges to be found. It’s so fantastic to see the confidence of each child grow as they push themselves to jump a wider gap or leap from a higher height with or without the help of their educator. The thrill of the adrenaline and the cheer when they land serves to cement these positive feelings of belief in their own capabilities and their willingness to embrace challenges (and aside from that; it’s really, really fun!). 3,2,1 GO!!
We also built huge tangle-y spider webs between the trees because the children have really taken a shine to them with some choosing to try their hand at making their own additions with extra pieces of rope. They concentrate in on their task even when there is noise and distraction around them and test their knots with a tug before trying again if it unravels. Child-led moments lead to this kind of focus and the learning covers both the improvement of their knot tying skills as well as their persistence and belief that they will succeed if they just keep trying.
One of our children loves to talk about how things work and especially anything with buttons so the knots on the tree branches all around him became buttons for all sorts of actions and surprises on the boat he had decided we were on. I was able to make myself a cup of tea, there was a button to operate the winch, one to lower the bed with multiple pressing providing blankets and all the pillows you could possibly want. One of his friends joined in and soon there was high speed zooming, emergency rescues and even one button that made it snow on board the ship!!
This button theme also extended to a focus activity later in the week with Gemma helping him to draw a Hospital on a large piece of paper. The buttons operated the doors and a lift to 6 different floors. This activity drew in a number of friends and together they decided what was to be on each hospital floor with the incorporation of literacy and maths in a very natural way so that they practiced counting the lift up and down, recognised written numbers and helped with sounding out words.
Once the children had finished using some sticky mud to make beautifully decorated biscuits and cakes, they took turns in rolling up and throwing mud balls at a big X target chalked onto a propped up log. It was brilliant fun and kept their attention for a long time, supporting each other with beautiful words of encouragement and cheering for themselves and their friends. What a lovely bunch of bananas they are!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham