Love is in the air!
There’s no better way to start your week than with some sweet Valentine’s Day activities! We had a really nice morning talking about all of the people that we love, and why we love them! Through the morning, we all had the chance to make some special Valentine’s cards! We used apples to make heart shaped stamps and pressed them into lots of different colours and experimented with different shapes we could make with the stamps.
Another fun Valentine’s activity was using the hammer and nails to make heart shapes along a plank of wood! The children always love getting involved with tool use activities and are wonderful at remembering the rules of keeping safe while doing these risky activities, “We hold our hands behind our back until the educator is ready!”. It is lovely to see how much perseverance the children are developing; not giving up when things feel a little challenging and giving it all their best! After the nails had been hammered into place, the children used coloured wool to weave and wrap around the nails to add some colour to their hearts. It’s always lovely to see the children put so much effort into activities which take a while to complete, they keep their passion for crafting and loved how it looked when it was finished!
After all that rain in the middle of the week, we certainly made the most of the mud and water in the forest! It’s been a long while since we’ve had big puddles and mud patches to play in! We’ve been using the buckets and bottles for lots of transporting play, we’ve been making potions and soups with as much mud as possible and making running tracks for the water down pipes and into buckets! The children are developing their wonderful communication skills while moving the big buckets of water around, “Can you move over there a little bit please? I need to move this bucket!”.
With our little explorers still really focused on transport play, we’ve been getting more and more creative with the activities to develop this interest! Our stage area at the back of the forest has been transformed into a train station, with chairs, and conductors letting the passengers know when the next train is coming. It was so lovely to see the children sharing the space and getting creative together; starting up their own conversations about where they were going on the train, and who they were going to see “I’m going to the beach with my mummy! We take our sandwich and snacks with us, so we don’t get hungry!”. Along with our train station, we also made our own small outdoor train tracks using strips of cardboard and tape with track print on it! Having these small pieces allows the children to build the tracks wherever they would like around the forest, adding loads to their imaginative play, and interest in construction!
We hope you all have a wonderful weekend, we’ll see you next week!
Little Forest Folk
Morden