As the new term opened its pages to another week, our forest has been the backdrop for some beautiful friendship building.
New children in small groups with the educators have been playing hide and seek. Not only does this give children the chance to explore the play areas within the boundaries but the children soon realise they must help each other in order to ‘trick’ the educator by trying to stay very quiet. Not something our Little Forest Folk-ers are accomplished at yet as their giggles seemed to be contagious and it was never long before their hiding places became discovered. As children have taken on the role as seeker they are quickly learning each other’s names calling out “I see you!”
In other games such as Duck, Duck, Goose, we learnt that our Little Forest Folk like making up their own rules. When someone shouted “GOOSE” it appeared this meant ALL the children stand up and run in different directions and from there on out the game looked very similar to hide and seek again. However, if the aim of the game was to experience joy and positive interactions with each other opposed to following game rules, our children were winning! Over time, the educators will assess how much they are needed in these interactions and will step back or step in as needed (but for now we love being part of the game and this is why we love September!)
Our new children are not the only ones who are having to be brave and put their skills at winning over new friends to the test. As many of our older children have departed for the adventure of school, we have some children who are now on the look-out for new friendships. They have been instigating conversation at the art tables, at the hand washing stations, at the toilets, in the mud kitchen and by snack time they have been marching into the snack circle with a new friend besides them.
Friendships are not the only thing being built this week. As children appeared to be really interested in being creative with art materials last week, they have been discovering a very wide range of junk modelling materials in the forest. At first we were interested in what they would do with it, a large cardboard box at first was explored by children who sat on it, in it and hid under it and then as the week progressed it was painted a rainbow of colours and paper plate ‘wheels’ were added.
A collection of bottles and tubes made a marble run which children explored both their connection and positional schemas with. A schema is an action that children repeat and each time they do it they are building neurological pathways in their brains for new concepts to be stored. With the marble runs we watched as children fed pebbles and stones through the top tube and followed their stones journey as it travelled through the run and landed in the saucepan waiting at the bottom. This was repeated again and again and sometimes subtle changes were made ‘what happens if more than one stone is put in? What if I put the stone in from a greater height? Why does that stone make a louder sound when it hits the saucepan?’
By the end of the week, there were three different runs, some designed for stones, some for balls and one specially for water. It’s this joy in connecting and joining things together that is driving this theme in play and is helping the child construct their understanding of the world and how things work.
After such busy playful days, our end of day play has been taking on its own new routine as children have been enjoying some ‘mindful movement’. We have been standing strong like mountains, swaying gently like trees, we have been laying on the floor and lifting our heads and chests off the floor and hissing like snakes before moving into cow pose and mooing like...cows! Each movement gives us time to think about how our parts of the body are feeling and we end the session on our backs, giving our knees a big hug and looking up into the clouds above us. The state of Zen is needed and reboots energy levels ready for Miranda to do her farewells and depart on her electronic scooter. The children get immensely excited by this and love watching the whole process! From Miranda putting on her helmet, to pushing the power button and then it’s a big countdown as she suddenly launches into motion and flies through the wind like Queen Boudica on her chariot before disappearing beyond the bridge.
We hope you all have a wonderful weekends!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham