Our Week in the Forest...
This week Twickenham open their doors to holiday campers for the first time since we opened in September and what a fabulous time we’ve all had.
Face painting has been a very popular activity here in our forest this week. Children have chosen to be butterflies, tigers, unicorns, spider men and green faced monsters. They have delighted in playing at being someone else and experiencing what they might feel if they were a superhero, wild animal or insect. We have continued with talking, reading and expressing our feelings and finding the words to express to our friends how we feel e.g. when a stick has been snatched or a turn has been missed.
As well as colourful faces, we have been decorating the very small stretch of disused railways tracks on our adventure walks, we have coloured the bricks on our wall near our toilet tents and the dead trees and branches have been coloured too. All this art work has been created with just the humble chalk.
We set off on a great adventure walk one day with everyone from the forest, all the teachers and all the children and we used the wagon to transport all our snacks, water, cups and the grab bag. Miranda didn’t have to pull the wagon as she had so many helpers who wanted to assist and I must say they did an excellent job of pulling the fully loaded wagon along the path and steering it straight too. We clambered on the fallen plane tree, and we even had a small extra adventure walk within our adventure walk as we branched off into the undergrowth to see if we could find anymore hidden train tracks.
We’ve had adventures to our bridge over the river Crane, and the children have delighted in throwing pooh sticks into the river and then watching them swoosh through under the bridge in the rain swollen, racing river. At one point, the pooh sticks got bigger and bigger and the children worked together to lift up larger sticks to drop into the river. It was delightful to see them helping each other and laughing at their wild antics. They attempted to lift and throw a rather large log as well, but proved to be just a little too large for their young arms, hands and muscles.
Lizzie lit a fire and the regular forest children and the holiday campers all learnt about fire safety, and what makes a fire burn, while warming themselves around the fire circle. They all waited patiently for their much anticipated turn to roasted marshmallows, followed of course by rapidly devouring the delicious melted treats.
We have all really enjoyed having new faces in the forest with us this week, but we have missed our regular friends and look forward to seeing them soon. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and we'll see you all again next week.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham