This week in the forest we have all been enjoying some festive activities. The children have been getting creative with Christmas crafts, singing, dancing and our very own theatre production!
As the children walked out to our forest camp talk was already steering towards Santa, stockings and his reindeer! They tried to remember all the names of Santa’s reindeer. At base-camp the children continued this theme as they built an enormous sleigh complete with reindeer straps and a big cabin for all the presents. The children imagined they were flying high above the trees as they delivered presents to all the children below. They took it turns to say “look… there’s my house… lets go down there!” The game continued for quite some time until they had visited everyone’s house!
The children made some beautiful winter scenes this week using black paper, white feathers, chalk and some corn starch puffs that they could stick on with just water! Their pictures were of snowmen, snow covered houses and snow-flowers! Once they had finished many of the children then started to write their own names using the chalks. It was wonderful to see how quick the children are at learning these new skills.
The children’s creativity didn’t stop there! In the forest the children made their own pom-pom decorations using wool. They had to wrap the wool round a card template, tie a knot and snip through the wool with scissors. The children also made decorations with pine cones, sticks, natural ribbons and sparkly pipe cleaners. The final activity was making Christmas cards. The children used pens, glue, tissue paper and natural found objects to create collage pictures on the front and then had their message scribed for them. These were sent to friends, family members or even Santa!
One day we saw a group of children sit down in a big log circle. One child decided to started telling a story. Soon all the children wanted to be involved in the story so we started to narrate a story about a little mouse meeting all the forest animals whilst searching for a lost friend. Whenever new characters were announced in the story the children got up and acted it out using wonderfully theatrical voices and moving in different ways. The children’s confidence to act out a story in front of a group was wonderful to see!
As the term draws to an end for our term time families we would like to wish everyone a well deserved break and a happy Christmas. We can’t wait to see you all again in January to see what the new year will bring!
Little Forest Folk
Putney Heath