It’s been a beautiful week in the forest this week with all the different weathers to explore. We have had beautiful sunshine, wind and rain and even thought we heard some thunder in the distance. The children looked at the pictures of lightening in the books as they were curious as to what it might look like!
We have also been fascinated by the river this week, noticing that it is flowing a lot faster and looks a bit deeper than usual. We had a think about why the river had changed and one of the children suggested there was more water in it, which quickly became a discussion of where the water might have come from. At that moment it began to rain, and the children worked out that the water in the river must come from the rain in the sky. With the storm making things a little windy we thought this was a perfect time to make flags and explore them flapping in the wind. So, the children set off exploring patterns they could make with the paint on the pieces of fabric and then we attached these to some sticks as flag poles. We watched the flags flap in the wind and then quickly decided we needed to use the flags for other things too, such as on top of our pirate ship so everyone would know we were pirates and as our finish flag as we raced around the forest pretending we were racing cars. We’ve also been using the pieces of fabric to create beautiful mosaic pictures and create letters of our names. We have been exploring the initial sounds of our names and recognising the first letters, so we had to make our letters using the fabric squares being very carefully glued onto the pieces of cardboard where we had written our letter.
We have had some wonderful chefs this week creating some bubbly mud pies, sticky cakes and leaf soup. The children have been pretending to put their concoctions in the oven crate to cook them and have been sharing out all their masterpieces. As the children showed such interest in cooking, the educators helped the children cook and explore with some real ingredients. The children peeled, cut and mashed up some bananas independently, mixed in some flour and spread this carefully onto baking trays with some chocolate sprinkled on top. The children came in the following day saying how delicious their banana bake was when they tried it at home that evening.
Our little gardeners have been helping out lots this week as we began to prepare our vegetable patch for planting in the Spring. They have been digging up weeds and harvesting the last of the vegetables that they had been growing including some chard to take home to try. Then it was time to start thinking about planting some new seeds. The children all had turns planting some new seeds in pots and we had a think about what seeds needed in order to be able to grow. The children knew that the seeds needed sunlight and water and some children even suggested that we needed to keep the seeds warm, so we have tucked them safely into our lovely and warm greenhouse.
We hope you all have had wonderful weeks, and we hope you have relaxing weekends!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham