Planting our new forest!
This week has seen a change in weather with the sun peeking through the clouds and signs of spring on its way. With this change we thought it best to prepare for spring by planting some flowers and baby trees! We started the week by upcycling some of our tyres into makeshift plant pots, filling them with a base of cardboard packaging and sticks, then topped with compost. The children helped in all stages to prep the tyres and then helped us plant and water our lovely tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. We chose some lovely colours, so we hope to see some yellow, blue, red, and pink in our forest soon appearing! We already have some lovely snowdrops and crocuses in the forest giving us splashes of white and violet!
With our lovely start to the week, by good fortune James (LFF founder and owner) had some spare tree saplings left over from the school and asked if we would like to plant them on our site. Without hesitation we took up the offer and were given a very generous 20 saplings to plant! The children again helped all stages, first finding the best spots to plant them, then prepping the ground by digging a hole and adding a bit of compost bedding, and then finally planting the trees with a tree guard and a drink of water! It is lovely to think that the trees we have planted with the children will be here for many years to come and help maintain our lovely forest space. We will be sure to monitor their growth and make a plaque of when they were planted so future children can know how old the trees are.
With all this planting happening at the start of the week it became a great opportunity to talk about what plants and trees need to live and grow just like us. There were a lot of lovely discussions, and it was great to see that the children felt a sense of ownership to care and look after the flora we had introduced to our forest space. We often talk about the benefits of trees with our kids through our forest rule 'No shaking and no breaking', where we talk about caring for our environment and if we break our trees they will no longer grow. Some children are also able to understand that the trees provide us oxygen to breathe and wildlife habitats and food to survive.
As temperatures are warming up, we have also seen the children keen to play with water. The team have been fantastic at setting up exciting water play areas infused with our mud kitchen making for a very exciting and messy experience! Some of the children took this as an opportunity to further explore colour through introducing paints into the water play and experimenting with colour combinations. A lovely week full of exploration, creativity, and green fingers!
Little Forest Folk
Morden