Enjoying the heatwave!
It seems summer has finally arrived, and the children have been able to take off their waterproof jackets and enjoy the warm weather. With the weather being so warm we have been doing lots of lovely cooling activities such as water play! At the start of the week this was mainly happening in our designated water play/mud kitchen area, however the educators decided to mix things up. We therefore dismantled the guttering and made a larger water play area near our role play shop. We used four of our large storage buckets and filled them up with water and brought a mixture of containers. We then had the gutters running off the tables into separate buckets for the children to pour the water and also see what they could make float down the water slides. It was great to see all the children approaching the activity throughout the day. Some children merely played there for 10 minutes or so, but some of the children were engaged in the activity for the whole morning and in some cases the whole day. It is great to see how activities can have a range of engagement for our children but also interesting to see how engaged our children can be when given that freedom to play!
As well as water play, we have also been making lots of cosy dens! This has been a mixture of premade spaces from the educators and spaces the children have made too. Each den has been made up of similar feature with a roof always being priority for some shade. We have added to these cosy cool spaces by bringing out our bean bags and cushions. It has been lovely to see how the children have interpreted these spaces, with some children choosing them to purely rest and have a little nap on a bean bag, and others choosing it to be a base for the imaginative play, taking on superhero missions but always returning for their briefing/debriefing on all their missions!
Another highlight of the week has been our ongoing gardening and allotment project. The children were quick to identify that some of our plants were looking dry and a bit hot like ourselves at the start of the week and decided they needed watering. We therefore used some of the water from our water play area to water the plants and our water hose as well. The children liked the look of these plants and trees cooling in the water spray, so soon asked to be sprayed which led to the children running in and out of the water cooling themselves down. The children soon identified that the educators looked far too dry in comparison and therefore decided to water the educators using the watering cans and the potion bottles! It didn’t take long to dry off again in the glorious sunshine.
A lovely warm week in the sun and we look forward to this summer weather continuing into the following weeks!
Little Forest Folk
Morden