It has definitely felt like autumn in the Twickenham forest this week and we’ve enjoyed getting in to the festivities. Crunchy leaves, a cool breeze and speckled webs glistening with dew drops; it’s been a lovely transition to observe and has inspired a lot of the children’s play. We’ve started to think about harvest and have been amazed at the wonderful generosity and food donations we have received – thank you. This theme led us on to exploring different vegetables and the children enjoyed role playing as farmers on a tractor made from our obstacle course crates and wheels. We harvested potatoes, carrots, parsnips, radishes and even corn and then “sold” the fresh produce in our forest farm shop. The vegetables were peeled, chopped and counted and our fingers were definitely very muddy! The children loved learning about where our vegetables come from and how it ends up in our shops.
The Little Forest Folk-ers have also been wonderfully creative, cutting, sticking, and gluing to make scarecrows – inspired by our very popular tuff tray vegetable patch. We also had some paintings of our different vegetables and corns and carrots carefully crafted, using sticks in paint, in all the autumnal colours, to make dots.
The children have also been busy moulding, squishing and rolling clay into cupcakes and bread this week. The Great Forest Bake Off – they took it in turns to be the baker and the play developed into customers taking orders and discussing how much the cakes should cost.
We also explored other job roles in the forest. We had fire fighters and police officers leading on to great discussions about making good choices and how the children could work together with a long hose to put out a “fire” on our climbing frame.
Here at Twickenham, we love reusing a good cardboard box – this week a very large box was made into a car. The children drew on wheels and doors with crayons. Some children decided that our pan lids from the kitchen would make great steering wheels. “Put on your seatbelts” they shouted before starting their journey.
We have also been inspired by a wonderful fact book on Volcanoes this week and this sparked our imaginations. Some of our little Forest Folk-ers made our burnt tree into a huge volcano – pouring mud lava down the sides. We learnt about volcanoes that are sleeping and those that live under the sea.
The forest school train was also back in the station taking passengers and we had a service running from Twickenham to London Waterloo. Crates were lined up and placed on wooden planks which made the track and we had train drivers announcing to their friends that the train was ready to leave – holding their nose when they spoke, to experiment with the sound of their voice.
We made the most of all our puddles as well this week and the marvellous mud inspired some of our older children to make a wormery. We carefully followed the instructions in a book and added many comfy layers in to a large jar – mud, sand and leaves. We then gathered a bucket and went searching for some worms! Luckily there are many wiggle worms at the bottom of our garden, so we careful picked up wiggly woo and placed him, and a few others, in to our jar. The jar was then wrapped up (because the worms only like the dark) and we’ve placed it in our storage shed. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the worms we share the forest with and we can’t wait to check on them soon to see what they’ve been up to in their new home.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham