This week we opened our gates to a brand-new term, lots of new children and their loving families! It has been so wonderful to watch how differently children have approached settling in. Some children have joined us for breakfast, and due to the light, dry mornings, this has been eaten in alfresco style! As we have had very small quiet groups, the new children have been able to start their day calmly, gathered around the breakfast table and talking to the educators as the parakeets sing overhead.
Other children have joined us later in the morning and have wanted to take time to observe before exploring the environment at their own pace, while other children thrown themselves into the day as though they had always been here. Either way, there has been lots of support provided as the children learn the daily routine, meet our puppets that help explain the simple forest rules and learn to trust the adults and environment around them. As forest educators, we love this part of the job, being about to watch each child's character, their interests, the adults they navigate towards, the pace they want to take when approaching interaction and exploring play opportunities and use this tailor support for each child.
When children have had moments of sadness, our interactions are not designed to tell the child to stop feeling sad, but we aim to acknowledge feelings "oh, dear, you look so sad" and use physical comfort to communicate that we are going to remain right there with them as they move through that emotion. Then as children calm, we try and demonstrate verbalising the feelings, "I wonder if you were feeling so sad because you were not sure what to do or who to play with?". Our intention here is to communicate that feelings don't have to be hidden or certain feelings are unwanted in the forest, but instead that the adults are here to help - even if it is just a hand to hold until the feeling passes followed by a lovely story together.
Our mornings this week have been used to give children time in two smaller play groups as they make friends, explore the site and adults have used a play-based approach to interact with them. This helps them to start forming those wonderful attachments that will be fundamental in making children feel safe and secure in order to want to play independently of adults in the future and engage with risk (knowing that familiar safe base is there if they need it).
Miranda has been helping our children learn some of our wonderful action songs and rhymes and already we are seeing children joining in and making requests. Paints have also been utilised to foster positive adult and child interactions as we have finger painted, made handprints, traced around fingers and thumbs and talked about how the paint feels. This has then led to a lot of songs about fingers and hands.
Our older children have been very keen to help their new friends settle in and a group of children explained exactly how the rules keep you safe and showed off their wonderful vegetable garden too, they encouraged their new friends to help water it. Story time has been an organic opportunity for some children to enjoy some much-needed physical comfort and one on one attention. There was a beautiful moment when a group of children had sprawled out on the grass at the end of the day, facing up to a grey sky - feeling the light raindrops landing on their face while singing "Baby Baluga" with the adults also sprawled out beside them.
We hope you all have a wonderful weekend and we look forward to more forest adventures next week!
We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham