Art, Music, and Gloop!
When we came into the forest after the very windy weekend, we loved collecting up as many of the fallen leaves as we could find! The children were using their maths skills to make sure that everyone in the group had a leaf in their hand and loved to see which leaves were bigger than others. Once we’d collected enough leaves, we sat down at the table to make some lovely leaf art! The children experimented in lots of different ways to make their pictures; some used glue to stick their leaf, some used their leaf as a stamp or paintbrush, it was so interesting to see how unique each picture was!
One of the most fun activities we had this week was making our own gloop to squish! Harriet helped us to mix cornflour with water into a big tray, so we could feel how it could turn into a ball when you roll it in your hands. This was a great chance to talk about ‘liquid and solid’ with the children, and they gave some examples of liquids and solids they use such as “orange juice and milk!”.
We were testing our vocabulary skills with a game one afternoon; we went exploring around our forest space, looking for things that Sarah would describe “can we find something… heavy/flat/bendy?”. It was great to see the children really focussing on the environment and being creative with their answers when they found something that matched the word! After a little while, the children started to give their own prompts to their friends, took turns leading, and developed the activity themselves!
We set up our own forest band in the gazebo! The children loved to look closely at each instrument, like the tambourine, castanets, and drums. We spoke about how to hold and use them safely so we ‘respect our instruments’. The children started off with wanting to make as much noise as possible! However, after a while, we tested out different ways of playing ‘softly/slowly/quickly’, and we played music that sounds like a ‘mouse running’ with our maracas, and an ‘elephant walking’ with our drums! The children went on a parade around the forest with their instruments, filling it with music!
We hope you had a wonderful week too and have a lovely long bank holiday weekend all!
Little Forest Folk
Morden