As we closed the forest on last week, everything was in its place, butterflies had been released, resources cleaned and packed away and in the children’s vegetable garden sat a growing pumpkin, green tomatoes and some pink blushing strawberries. However, Monday arrived with a mystery most chilling! The green pumpkin had been ripped from its plant mother and devoured and the pink strawberries...all gone. Only the green tomatoes had survived. Who was our dastardly little thief? Who was this cheeky little pumpkin muncher and why do they not like green tomatoes? Luckily Linn had detectives aplenty to help her solve the case and Monday kicked started with a collection of ideas “It might have been a Fox!” suggested one child “or a dinosaur!” Added another. “ A mole might have got in from underground” came another hypothesis while another child adamantly stated “it wasn’t me!”
The children suggested a trap so that they might capture the little strawberry gobbler but we had second thoughts about doing anything that might harm an animal so we asked our detective assistants to draw ideas of ways we might trick this menace into leaving us a clue about their identity. We had lots of plans by the end of Monday and by Tuesday the group had reflected on the ideas and voted on the idea they were going to try first. Papers were laid down surrounding the vegetable patch and around the edges, a thin line of paint was left. “When they come back they will step in the paint and then they will leave footprints!”
When the children arrived on Wednesday and found a perfectly formed footprint on the paper, the excitement was palpable! Out came the footprint identity cards and the children were counting paw pads on the paper compared to those on the identity sheets, noticing the difference in sizes and slowly, suspects were ruled off the list. Mr Fox was no longer on the hook and a dog was clearly not going to be part of our investigation any longer. It came down to a either a hedgehog or a cat. Our investigation is by no means over but we felt we had made great progress.
The children have been loving music in the forest and a guitar that had been sterilised and cleaned thoroughly gave children opportunity to learn how to strum the strings and observe the different notes that emerged from the instrument. The deep notes were fascinating and the children attempted to imitate the sounds with their voices. A small, sanitised ukulele was also introduced so children could compare the weight and size difference of both instruments and the different sounds that could be made on each.
If it wasn’t for Covid, we could have gone inside, torn down the curtains to make outfits and ran around the forest with our guitars like the Von Trapps singing “Doe...a dear...a female dear” but alas we rather had fun tinkering and discovering the music in our own way.
The Eurovision Song Contest 2020 may have been cancelled but watch out 2021, we will be ready!
Have a beautiful weekend all and we look forward to more forest fun next week.
We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham