This week has been full of celebrations, adventures and fun!
Earlier in the week, we had a great opportunity for lots of adventures down the River Crane. Our new forest school friends enjoyed their first ever dip in the shallows, carefully splashing and exploring in their brand-new waterproofs and wellies. We had started to notice that some of the trees and berries had begun to change as summer draws to a close.
We’ve also had a forest full of dentists this week! Singing songs to remind us to “brush, brush, brush our teeth” and using our new wooden teeth cleaning kit to open our own dentists’ surgery. Appointment cards were given out and one of our children was an exceptional receptionist, making sure everyone got to their appointment on time! Teeth were cleaned, inspected and after our appointments, everyone got a sticker for being so brave.
We also found out that some of our children have a blue toothbrush, some have wooden ones and even paw patrol ones with lights! Some of our forest friends also got to use dry wipe pens and real toothbrushes to clean giant teeth. The children observed that the teeth were so dirty because of eating too many sweeties.
We cooled off with lots of water play this week, floating trays and sinking stones kept our Little Forest Folk-ers intrigued. Some of the stones did not fit in the cups, so we tried another one and another, until we found one that fit just right!
When we needed some shade, we drank lots of water and had a rest on our picnic blanket under the tarp and mottled sunshine. Practising the art of mindful relaxation, whilst listening to Mozart.
It was Rosh Hashanah this week and we had lots of fun celebrating. We greeted everyone with Shalom in our morning song and danced to some Hebrew music. One of our generous forest school parents had brought in some apples and honey for snack time, a traditional Rosh Hashanah practise. We dipped our apple slices in the honey and read a lovely story about Uncle Max coming to visit for the celebrations. It was a delicious treat. All the apples that were left over were then cut in half into stamps to make apple cards, so we could wish everyone a happy Jewish new year. The Little Forest Folk-ers dipped the apples in paint and stamped them on some multi-coloured card. It was very messy and very fun! Some of our honey was then added to our bubble mixture to make fantastic un-poppable bubbles. We created bubble blowers out of pipe cleaners and persevered and practised blowing beautiful bubbles! Finally, we made a fresh batch of playdoh that was shaped and plaited into Challah bread. The children really enjoyed learning about all these wonderful Jewish traditions.
Dinosaurs are always a big part of our forest adventures. We have loved reading “Crunch, Munch, Dinosaur Lunch” and exploring small world ‘s with ice cubes, white paint and wondering, “How the dinosaurs became extinct?”.
When we’ve been having lots of fun in the forest, it is important to put aside some time to do some litter picking and recycling. We showed our new forest friends how we keep our forest tidy and spoke about what can stay in the forest, what goes in the recycling and what goes in the bin.
We hope you all had wonderful weeks too and we cannot wait to see what adventures we get up to next week!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham