We had such a lovely sunny week in the forest!
The children's interest in vehicles and driving has returned this week, as we drew some roads and roundabouts on a big piece of paper and had some little cars and tractors to drive along them! They had stop signs to pause at, zebra crossings to check for pedestrians "You can cross the road now!" and even parking bays to use! We spoke about how some parking bays are saved for people who need them more than others, and not being allowed to park on the red lines "You can't park there! You get a fine!". If we found a rip in the paper, the children would say "road works!" and have their cars wait at the drawn-on cones for the teacher to fix the road with tape. After a while, the children wanted to drive all over the world! "I want to drive to Australia, that's where my Grandad is!" So we had a very long road all the way to a little drawing of Australia; the children then decided to find the aeroplane to fly back to our town again!
The children always love helping us look after our forest space; with Spring time arriving this week, we’ve been giving special attention to the new flowers and plants, giving them 'drinks of water', and noticing the bees and butterflies who use them for food and nectar! We also had a very exciting truck visit to deliver a big pile of woodchip, which the children loved watching as the back of the truck tipped it all out. Since then we’ve been making small trips back and forth to collect buckets of woodchip and spread it across the areas of mud that are still a little wet - “I’m a truck! I can carry all this heavy woodchip!”
Our new building resource this week has been sticki-bricks! The children always love experimenting with new resources, and have been creating such wonderful and elaborate ‘buildings’ and ‘ships’ with layers and angles to make great 3D structures!
We’ve also spent some more time writing our own stories; the children will tell us their own stories line by line, and watch the practitioner as their words are put down on the page. Their stories are getting so creative and fun to listen to as we practice more story telling, and the pride after we are finished is so lovely to see when they take their story to other teachers to read out loud and look at their drawing underneath!
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Morden