Putney Heath - The first signs of Spring!

Our Week in the Forest...

This week the first signs of spring have started to show. With a little more warmth in the sun, the children enjoyed exploring the forest to find little leaf buds on the saplings, shoots emerging from the ground, and early spring blossom flowering on the hawthorn trees. We have even started to spot some different kinds of mini beasts in the warmer weather. We saw a black beetle climbing one of our climbing trees, a little moth was flying around in the shards of light coming down through the trees, an enormous earthworm emerged from the ground and the children built him a little house, and we also spotted some mysterious eggs stuck to the bottom of a rotting tree trunk. After a little investigation, we discovered that they were beetle eggs.
 
Our Little Forest Folk-ers have also enjoyed some wonderful opportunities to explore the mathematical knowledge this week in creative ways. Some children climbed up a spiderweb with a cardboard tube and decided to create their own javelin game. They launched the tube from the top to see who could get it over a stick that was laid on the ground. The children kept score by recording tallies on their own mini blackboards.
Another group used lots of miniature logs to create a version of the skittles game. They used a special stick to throw onto the mini logs and see how many they could knock over. They then recorded how many they knocked over in a special little notebook.

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Our Little Forest Folk-ers also got creative this week as they made more animal poo from natural materials, pasta and clay. The children modelled the clay into their desired shape and stuck in various materials that they thought the animal may have eaten. Some children decided to make their own versions of the animals using the clay. They stuck grass, sticks and pasta on to add details to their models.
 
On one day, our Little Forest Folk-ers became prolific painters as they churned out wonderful colourful pictures of butterflies and other mini beasts and animals. The children discussed colour and texture as they explored form to create their masterpieces. It was great to see the different approaches that they used to create different effects. Some children spent hours over their pictures.
 
As the weather warms up, we look forward to seeing how the signs of spring develop. We will be talking about the leaf shapes as they emerge on the trees, watching the spring flowers sprout up front the ground and waiting to see if the local wildlife changes! See you all next week!

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Little Forest Folk
Putney Heath