Pirates in the forest!
Our forest space has been changing pretty rapidly, especially in the space at the front of the forest, where there have been lots of interesting new play resources set up, such as the little house, and the cool obstacle courses! This week, the new addition has been the pirate ship that has sailed into nursery! With sails made of blue tarps looking like the sea, a steering wheel, and a telescope to spot far away islands! This space has been welcomed by so much imaginative play! The children have been creating new characters and stories to act out and sharing these stories with their friends! It’s always so lovely to see the children express so much creativity and fun!
Because there hasn’t been much rain around recently, spotting snails and slugs has been a rare treat! But this week, we discovered a little patch at the back of the forest where the snails have been sheltering, and ‘growing big and strong while they sleep!’. We were so happy to spot these little snails, and the children were immediately thinking about what the snails might need to feel happy ‘He’s blowing bubbles! That means he’s scared! We need to give him leaves for blankets!’. They would collect food and make cosy corners for them to hide in, reminding their friends to be ‘very gentle’ and not shout too loudly, ‘you might hurt their ears, they’re only little’. The care and responsibility from the children has been so lovely to see.
The children always love using new materials to craft and create, and this week we have been using some air-drying foam clay, which is very sticky and fun to mould! The children chose to use popsicle sticks to make their crafts, using them as legs for their horses, propellers for their helicopters, or stems for their flowers! As the clay dried, the children would come back through the day to see how the texture had changed and were so excited to take them home and show their friends!
There are already some beautiful, coloured flowers popping up around the forest space! Snowdrops and crocuses have popped up everywhere, and the children are doing such a great job of caring for the flowers and making sure they have enough space to grow; reminding their friends ‘don’t break the flowers, they need to grow big and tall for the bees!’. Some of the children were a little disappointed that we couldn’t pick the flowers to show our mums and dads, so instead, we got out our paper and coloured pencils so that we could draw the flowers that we see! We perched next to the boundary where we let the flowers grow and picked the colours which would make the most beautiful pictures! It was really nice to spend some quiet time looking at the detail in our environment and enjoying all the colour in our space!
That’s all for this week, we hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Morden