Our Week in the Forest...
Adventures galore (written from the perspective of our Little Forest Folkers!)
The sun has shone most of the week blessing us with warmth on our faces and far less mud under our feet! The crocus bulbs have blossomed and created a carpet of beautiful pale purple flowers across the forest floor and the snowdrops too have bloomed with their white flowers nodding their heads in the dappled sunshine under the trees.
At last we have been able to take small groups of our Little Forest Folk-ers out on our first adventure walks this week and what fun we have had. Wearing our high-vis waist coats has made us feel quite important and we know that now we are all clearly visible. We have been walking as a group, staying between the educators and learning how to react when a dog approaches, “cross your arms, give yourself a hug and look up and away”, this way the dog knows you are not available for play. We have found disused train tracks in the bushes, benches with wonderfully carved pictures of trains and birds upon, and we have seen tiny white blossoms starting to bud and bloom on hawthorn bushes. Whenever we see a bicycle approaching, we have learnt to stand still in a line and to the side of the path so that they can pass, a lot of cyclists have said 'Thank you' to us as they zip past.
Miranda has taken all our songs that we love to sing and started to put them in a huge book for us and we are all taking turns illustrating around the edge of each song as we sing and colour in. It’s going to take a while to complete, but once it’s finished, we think it’s going to be gorgeous.
We have played various games with numbered and dotted pegs, and as we play, pinch and squeeze the pegs to open and close we can feel our fingers getting stronger and the pegs look like crocodiles, which make us laugh. Matching and calling the numbers has been a popular game, as was bulb planting, armed with trowels and buckets of daffodil bulbs, we are beautifying the area near our toilet tents.
We have a new rope and stick ladder hanging from one of our trees, which is challenging our climbing skills, and we have a small stage made of planks and pallets that the we are enjoying singing and dancing upon. Our theatrical shows don’t end there, and we have been telling our stories to our educators who have been writing them down for us. We were then cast as the characters in our own stories and had the chance to act them out, we call these our helicopter stories.
Gathering our bow saws, tool gloves and kneeling pads, we knelt among the leaf litter and carefully sawed tree branches into cookies, and using chalks and pens decorated them creating colourful discs, rich with our imagination. Our joyous week didn’t end there and we had a campfire dinner with the fire crackling as branches of Christmas tree were added to the flames and the heat warmed our faces. This week we have done so many things and we can’t wait for next week to start.
Have a lovely weekend and see you all again in a few days.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham