Our Week in the Forest...
This week the children have enjoyed a mixture of rain and shine, presenting them with lots more opportunities in the forest!
The slack line has been a concrete feature in the forest this week due to the continuous positive feedback we have received from our Little Forest Folk-ers. They have enjoyed experimenting with the different ways their bodies move by balancing and jumping on the slack line, seeing how they bend in different directions.
With some lovely variations of fruit being available to the children during snack time, Anya suggested to our Little Forest Folk-ers to plant them in the forest to see if they grow. The children thought this was a great idea and after snack time they set off to bury them in the ground, attempting to avoid any animals stealing them for their dinner!
The children have also enjoyed creating their own physical activities in the forest with some of them making their own see saws. Experimenting with the way they can control the plank as it balances across the log and seeing if they can use their bodies to make the plank balance evenly across the bottom log. Our Little Forest Folk-ers have also enjoyed building dens, finding a variety of sticks to balance on each other, noticing where there are gaps and choosing the appropriate sticks to cover them up. The children also negotiated with each other as to where they would have the door to their den, making a group decision! Mid-week the children also enjoyed making a slide, using our climbing tree as the top and sliding down.
Putney Heath has also been transformed into a variety of settings with the children being fully immersed in their role plays. We have been on a boat trip within the deep shark infested waters, where we had to escape the human eating creatures. Luckily for the children on the boat, they got to safety pretty quickly…phew! We have also been on a magical trip to Netherland where Tinkerbell, who looked a lot like Lara, sprinkled special fairy dust on the children, giving them the ability to fly across the skies of Neverland, keeping away from the villainous pirate, Captain Hook. Another adventure took us into the hole of a rabbit who had misplaced his pocket watch! The children enjoyed drawing their own watches to help the rabbit who was pretty sad about his beloved watch.
Later in the week, as we popped on our waterproofs and backpacks and set out on our walk through the cricket pitch, some of the children heard a familiar sound. We identified the creature as a woodpecker and quickly scanned the skies in search of the beautiful creature who can be very hard to spot. However, our Little Forest Folk-ers beady eyes rarely miss a moving creature and they were quick to spot him pecking away at the bark for his breakfast!
Towards the end of the week, the weather varied even further with a morning downfall of snow! The children were extremely excited, planning to build snowmen and snowballs in the snow. This sparked discussions about melting and how the ground was too warm for the snow to settle and perhaps today we would not be able to play with snow. This did not stop our Little Forest Folk-ers from experimenting with the snow as they felt it hit their cheeks, feeling it as it melted against their warm skin.
The children have had another enjoyable and eventful week in the forest and we look forward to see what our skies deliver us next week, it has been very hard to predict recently! We hope you all have a beautiful weekend.
Little Forest Folk
Putney Heath