Our Week in the Forest...
Our week started with some glorious sunshine, bringing us a true taste of Spring! It was wonderful! We made the most of it by planting out our very first strawberry plants in the vegetable patch. The fact they had grown a little too big for their containers, meant that their roots were very clearly visible. This gave us the opportunity to carefully observe these amazing structures and the children enjoyed learning about how the plants use the roots to suck up water. Finding earthworms as they dug the ground in preparation also led to discussions about soil and how plants get the food they need from the soil. We also took the opportunity to plant out some more of the trees gifted to us by the Woodland Trust. Each child was able to choose a sapling, carefully fill their flowerpot full of compost and then label their sapling with their name and the type of tree. We now have a fresh lot of wild cherry, silver birch and oak saplings happily growing in our greenhouse and are looking forward to keeping track of their progress.
We’ve also been continuing our adventure walks each morning and this week some of our Little Forest Folk-ers had the opportunity to venture to pastures new with a trip to Waitrose! The children had some super discussions and questions about where different fruits and vegetables grow and demonstrated their excellent number skills as we counted how many bananas to buy. The kind till-operator gave them enough charity tokens to have one each, and they had lots of fun posting them into the boxes. The children were so excited to then return to the forest, with bags full of bananas, ready to bake in the fire! Sure enough, by the time they returned, the children who had stayed in the forest were ready and waiting with a cosy campfire on which to cook the bananas. They were soon wrapped in foil and tucked into the embers ready for our pudding. It’s safe to say that our fire-baked bananas were very much enjoyed by everyone!
Face (and hand) painting has proven to be very popular again this week! Hannah has been working her magic to create various animals and characters that the children have requested. We have had tigers, lions, butterflies, bat man, bat girl, spider man and Elsa and Ana from Frozen. It is always exciting to see the children’s delight when they look at themselves in the mirror and step into their different characters. On one occasion, a group of children were the characters from Frozen and they built a Frozen house with sticks decorated with icy blue chalk! We also had superheroes coming to the rescue to save people from the mud!
One morning on our usual adventure walk route, we decided to take the chalk with us and soon discovered how much fun it was for someone to lie down and be drawn around (even the educators!). This led to interesting observations from the children on how big they were compared to each other, as well as a chance to get their creative juices flowing as they designed beautiful outfits for each other’s chalk outlines. After that, we then started drawing stepping stones, with our Little Forest Folk-ers suggesting various different shapes. We started out with simple circles, squares and triangles which everyone enjoyed hopping and jumping their way through and, by the end, the children were suggesting car, truck, lorry, snake and cement mixer stepping stones! This gave the educators a chance to test their own artistic abilities too… We then hopped, skipped and jumped our way home across our stepping stones, much to the delight of the children, educators and passing members of the public alike.
Going out on the adventure walks has given rise to more discussion about our surrounding area. One afternoon this week, we laid a big sheet of paper on the floor and together made a map of all our favourite places. The children loved the chance to share their personal favourites and then draw them on the map. We had muddy puddles, bird feeders, rivers, bridges and particular trees feature, along with a few aeroplanes, crocodiles and boats! The result is a beautifully brightly coloured testimony to how much our Little Forest Folk-ers love and feel connected to the natural environment in which they spend their days.
Although the week finished on a wetter note than it started, our Little Forest Folk-ers took it all in their stride with their usual joy and resilience! Indeed, the wet weather gave fresh opportunities for den-making (with a newly erected roof over our pallet fire-engine!), running around games on the grassland, the usual excellent concoctions in the mud kitchen and cosying up with a book under one of our shelters. One of our favourite books is ‘Paper Dolls’ by Julia Donaldson, and to celebrate World Book Day on Thursday we all enjoyed making our very own paper dolls too.
As you can see, it’s been another wonderful week in the woods. We’re grateful for all the joy and abundance we experience together. Have a lovely weekend, and we’ll see you next week for more fun and adventure!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham