This week our Little Forest Folk-ers have continued their fascination of bugs, searching for them all around the forest. With Earth Day on Thursday and this year’s theme as restore our world, the eco-school council got their thinking caps on for ideas to help restore our forest.
The children decided that we needed to help the bugs as they needed more homes for them to live in. We thought to create a special place for all the bugs to live happily in…. how about a Bug Hotel! We have begun to create layers between pallets for all of the tiny insects to live, by filling it with all the things we can find. Our first layer has been completed this week and has been filled with a number of objects. We practiced our tool skills by using the bow saw this week, sawing up logs so that they would fit in our hotel. The children also enjoyed using the hand drill and drilling so many little holes into the logs for the insects to stay in before posting the logs into the pallets. We spoke about depth as some of the holes were deep, but others were shallow, which meant there were rooms for all different sized bugs. The children then used some branches of pine trees that we had found to fill in the gaps in the layer and made it all soft and comfy for the insects. The children plan to continue to build up the layers for our bug hotel until it reaches the sky! So next week we will be continuing to let it grow as we explore more materials.
Some of our children for Earth Day helped look after the garden area, preparing to plant more trees in our forest by weeding and turning the soil. Our little potted trees are ready now to be planted in the forest and so next week our Little Forest Folk-ers will be taking on this big task. They also watered the plants that had already begun to grow and planted some broad beans in a jar so we can see the roots grow as well as the leaves!
Our little adventurers have also been exploring, creating and concocting some wonderful potions. Some filled up a huge bucket as a witch’s cauldron of all the ingredients they could find around the forest, as well as some spaghetti and paint. Others explored the colour changes with potions in jars. They mixed water and paint together and shook them to colour the water and then would pour each colour together to see what it would turn into. The children found this very magical and quickly discovered the sounds they could create with the jars too by hitting them with sticks when they were filled with different levels of water. The sound would change too when the lid was on or off and this fascinated the budding scientists. With music becoming a stronger focus for the children, new music areas were created with pots and pans, shakers, lids and hollowed sticks for the children to explore the sounds.
The children have also been excitedly sharing some new stories in the forest this week which have sparked some creative juices amongst the children. ‘Izzy Gizmo’ has become a favourite in the forest about a little girl who is an inventor. The children love the idea of inventing machines and so we have had lots of creations made around the forest. We’ve had some pen makers, where when the children put in a pen, a different pen that had to be a different colour would come out. Another child created a jetpack and explored patterns they could draw on so that it would be different to any other jetpack in the world and got their friends to help colour it. We’ve even had a trap builder invention where you put a baddie into the machine who you are trying to catch, and it creates the perfect trap for them. The books have also been inspiring some beautiful puppet shows that the children have created as well as our educators telling stories through them too.
What a wonderful sunny week we have had, we cannot wait to see what next week brings and have lovely weekends all!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham