‘Shakespeare week’
We ended last week with a very exciting digging adventure! The dinosaur bones the children had made the previous week were ready to be used and buried. We buried the bones around the forest and the children were very excited to start to discover which bones they could find. The children made their own treasure maps to follow, and they all worked together brilliantly to unveil the wonderful dinosaur bones. We also finished the week off with a lovely meadow adventure, having imaginary picnics, exploring the different textures on the trees and most importantly protecting an injured bee by building a small fence around it.
We then entered into Shakespeare week and we were all super excited to learn about Shakespeare’s work and engage in different activities. To begin our Shakespeare journey, the children and educators read one of Shakespeare’s plays. “A Midsummers night’s dream” and the children were fascinated by all the different fairy characters and wanted to become these characters. Titania the fairy queen was very popular, and we collected some bendy sticks and holly leaves to create our very own fairy wings. The children loved this and were flying around the forest all day. The children also made some beautiful fairy wands which gave them special powers!
Further into the week we decided to make our own theatre. We used a tarp and created a chalet tarp which the children used to create their own plays. We wrote some words relating to the theatre on the logs with chalk, words such as ‘actor’ ‘audience’ and ‘scripts’, and the children even had a go at writing their own scripts. The scripts were then used to create a play that the children performed on their stage in their theatre.
A very exciting thing happened in the middle of the week… We had a visit from one of Shakespeare’s very own witches from his play ‘Macbeth”. She entered the forest singing one of the songs from ‘Macbeth’ and she was wearing a witch’s hat and holding a big cauldron. The children were amazed and so excited about this visit and helped the witch to build a fire to put her cauldron on it. But what was in the cauldron? Don’t worry it was only lots of words, phew! The children loved learning the words of the weeks through one of Shakespeare’s plays. The witch is more than welcome in our forest!
We ended the week with the most wonderful day! All our Little Forest Folk-ers and educators came to the forest dressed up as a Shakespearean character and the number of different characters we had was amazing! We had fairy queens, elves, kings, queens, forest creatures and even William Shakespeare himself! We set up a theatre once again and the children loved showcasing their costumes and creating plays for the other children to watch. We have certainly loved Shakespeare week and have learnt lots about his work.
We hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Putney Heath