With cries of excitement, our children in the forest made a new discovery this week. “What is this?” they asked, as they peered down at little black insects with orange markings. A quick look at some of the insect identification booklets we have soon revealed they were ladybird larva. What was really exciting, was watching them glue themselves to leaves and go through their metamorphosis.
The children have visited them every day and watched as their accordion-like bodies slowly transformed shape and their spots developed. Some that must have had a head start made the children scream with delight as they came to let us know “Xiao, Lizzie, Miriam, they are finished!” and they showed us a fully formed ladybirds sitting on a leaf – all done up to the nines in their new outfits! How special, to be able to watch the amazing process of change from baby to adult in such a short span of time. We have had lots of conversations about animals that change such as caterpillars to butterflies and baby Simba to Adult Simba!
This process of change may have inspired the children’s imaginations this week. It began with some children remembering their favourite Xiao TV moments and some children requested that we make paper dolls. At first these were little humans, and the children made outfits and shoes and glued on hair. Then they decided they were going to turn them into mermaids, cutting off their legs as they said “they are changing!” and we helped stick on tails and then their dolls went on to have lots of undersea adventures around the forest.
Our children have been wonderful at showing new children around the site this week, where to put their lunchboxes, where to put their water bottles and where to go to the toilet. Later, the children were telling the new children lots of cool things they have done recently like building volcanoes. One child said to a new child “would you like to make a volcano?” Feeling a little shy but pleased to be making a new friend, the new child nodded their head and Rosa was on hand to help the children make papier mache and they sat in a group helping to build their volcano – tearing newspaper, covering it in glue and adding it to our sticking mountain. There were lots of giggles from the new child as the sensory fun and new friendships sparked joy. However, the fun truly began when the experienced children eagerly showed them the chemical reactions that happen when you mix the bicarb powder and vinegar! Booom!
A letter from Edinburgh arrived this week from one of our former educators, Virginia. The educators helped read it to the children who then eagerly wanted to write back! They drew and cut out postcard shaped pieces of card and decorated them with amazing illustrations of the forest and some attempted to pen their own sentiments and others wanted to provided further illustrations and have educators scribe their fondest wishes. We are going to provide stamps and send them off and hopefully a new pen pal relationship would have formed and it will be a nice nod to the times of yesteryear when people would wait for pigeons to carry their messages back and forth.
We hope you have a brilliant weekend in the sun – its going to be a warm one so enjoy your sunny days safely and we look forward to more fun next week!
We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham