The Very Hungry Caterpillar came to the forest this week as we read the story by Eric Carle and talked about the life cycle of the butterfly. One of our super educators created an amazing caterpillar head with cardboard and paint and provided a variety of fruit which we then enjoyed feeding to the caterpillar head through his large round mouth. Naming of the fruit in turn led to discussions around good food for caterpillars and children to help them all grow and be healthy.
Dinosaurs were another enthralling theme of the day as we cracked open blocks of chalk with dinosaur bones hidden within and we created fossils by rolling objects in thin clay to make indents. We had a stone age cave in one corner of the forest where cave paintings were very popular, painting with red, brown, and black shades and wondering where those colours could come from before there were paint shops. Discussions around stones used as tools in the past, like arrowheads and knives ignited the children’s imagination as they hunted around the forest for stones of various shapes that might be useful if we lost our sharp lunch knife. “Cave Baby’ By Julia Donaldson and Emily Gravett, a delightful stone aged themed story, encouraged our younger explorers to stomp around the forest pretending to be woolly mammoths and sabre toothed tigers, really quite a roarsome day was had by all.
As part of our environmental learning, respect and responsibility towards our forest and the land around us, a small group of Little Forest Folk-ers and educators donned blue work gloves and headed into our car park to pick up litter. We collected nearly a bag full of litter and yet we only cleared half the car park, but we were delighted by our progress.
See you all again next time!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham