With the holiday campers here at Morden this week we’ve been looking at our forest with fresh eyes and have been keenly exploring all the amazing natural life around us. Luckily, the caterpillars have also been keeping cool in this fierce heat by visiting us under the forest canopy. Our first drop-in was from a lime hawk-moth caterpillar that wowed us with its blue horn and long chubby body. The children exclaimed how cute it was and were curious to know what it would turn into! We learned that it would pupate underground over winter and next year would become a lime hawk-moth!
This theme has been such fun to explore in a host of activities with all our educators. Our lovely educator Lucia created a visual life cycle collage with the children, showing the process from egg to chrysalis, to caterpillar and finally butterfly or moth! The children also explored symmetry with educators Migs and Joe, first using the folding and printing technique and then using mirrors to create butterfly wings!
Finally, we’ve delved a bit deeper into the microscopic inhabitants of our forest, exploring the role of bacteria in our ecosystem. First, we started the week with an experiment with educator Charlotte to see how soap can scare away the bad bacteria. Then, we left some cucumbers to decompose so we could observe the changes. Our little explorers were great at hypothesising what might happen as time went on and they stayed out of the fridge. The result was pretty yucky… but we have a solution as our Little Forest Folk-ers ended the week pickling their very own cucumbers!
What a fab week, we can’t wait to see you all again next week for more adventures!
Little Forest Folk
Morden