The crisp, cold air, soft blue skies and colourful falling leaves is such a beautiful time of the year and this week has been gorgeous, dressed up in all its autumnal finery. Our children have been enjoying the sunshine and using nature to spark their imaginations which means we have been super busy. Creatively we have been inspired by nature and gathering leaves of all shapes and sizes from the forest floor we have made the most fabulous leaf prints, by painting one side of the leaf and then pressing it down into the paper, the magic happens when we lift the leaves and find our beautiful prints. Other children wanted jewellery so with sticky tape around their wrists, leaves, sticks and feathers were gathered up and attached to the sticky tape as each explorer moved through the forest looking for treasure and pretty items. We had quite an amazing set of tribal wrist bands by the end of the day.
Bugs hunts were once again very popular this week, and the children learnt that as the forest cools and shuts down for winter there are less and less bugs to be found, and less variety of insects too, although we did find a plethora of worms on our beautiful site. Searching through log piles and leaves is always such great fun, but we had a new log pile to investigate. The tree surgeons had been in on the weekend and removed a dying branch from our mighty Plane Tree, which allowed our educators help the children understand why branches can be cut and for the health of the tree and why we’re not breaking the “No shaking, no breaking” rule. We had photos and videos of the tree surgeons climbing up the tree and lowering the cut limb, which the children were thrilled to watch, and then the children were able to investigate the huge limb that had been cut into smaller pieces and the noticed hollow sections, and that the bark was different than the bark on the tree trunk. Feeling the texture of the branch and the tree trunk led onto investigating our texture boards. Knobbly, rough, scratchy and fluffy were words used to describe the textures that the children were investigating. One child noted that the cut branch smelt different than the trunk of the tree, which was very observant, and this led onto to lots of chatter about how mud smells different too.
Adding to our skills we learnt how to hammer safely this week, wearing our tool gloves and concentrating upon hitting the nail on the head, the children created some lovely nail boards with snips of material attached to their carpentry work. Another group of budding palaeontologists teamed up to create dinosaur land, moving soil, rocks, mud, sand and gravel to a specific location and then they went on to draw marvellous trees, plants and dinosaurs with which to populate dinosaur land. This all-day project involved so many skills new to some children and the teamwork needed by them all was delightful to behold.
Have a lovely weekend and see you next week!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham