We’ve been so excited to welcome our Easter Holiday Campers to the Morden Forest this week! Having some new faces to become friendly with is always so much fun and having some older children to add new spark to our children’s ideas is always so wonderful to see.
This week, a group of children joined practitioner Spike at the front of the forest for some tool work activities! After some discussion in the group, the children decided that they wanted to design and build ‘a house’ using our ‘floor book’ to draw the designs, and the bow saw and loppers to make the branches the correct length. The children each drew their own vision for the house, and drew the tools they would be using, talking about the shapes in the designs, “this has four sides!” and the letters in the names of the tools they were using.
The front of the forest has also been home to our new car which was built by practitioner Ronnie with help from our Forest Folkers! They collected tires and pallets to make the body, and the wooden pallet became the car bonnet, and the slide on the bonnet in the tires! The children would take turns to sit in the tire and have their turn sliding down to the bottom, so much fun!
Our gardening activities have been very popular again this week; the children have been collecting compost from the compost bin using their buckets and spades, and spreading it around the growing boxes, flower beds, and baby fruit trees! The children noticed that the blossoms have been growing on our baby trees, “That means fruit is going to grow!”, “The bees are going to be so happy!”. We have been using measuring tapes to see if we notice a difference in the height of the plants we are looking after, “This one is the tallest!” and the children are developing their sense of pride and ownership in their forest space!
We had a lovely new picnic blanket delivered to the nursery this week, which has sparked some super fun picnic parties! We share out the plates, cups and play picnic food, so the children can decide what they would like to have as their meal! “I can pass you the bread!”, “Can I have the green cup please?”. These have been some lovely opportunities to have some long conversations with the children, talking about their plans for play, and their ideas for activities we would like to have fun with next week!
Little Forest Folk
Morden