It seemed the weather wasn’t too sure about how it felt about Mondays this week and she was skidding around the skies giving us grey clouds and rumbling thunder one minute then bursts of sun the next. However, our Little Forest Folk-ers entered the site with a consistent high energy and soon found themselves immersed in fun and learning, despite the weathers tantrums. Green group have been previously enjoying Linn’s Star Wars books and we have noticed that their play has been full of Darth Vadars and R2-D2’s. This has also driven a lot of discussion about space and planets. The educators helped extend this by providing books about the planets and the solar system and there was lots of discussion about the planets that are closest and furthest from the sun and how this affects their climate and landscapes. The children had the idea to build a planet and so we provided balloons and papier-mâché and the children have been working on covering the balloons with layers of glue and newspaper so they can paint them and hang them up. Some children were very clear from the word go about which planet they were making “I am making Jupiter and it doesn’t have any rings” while others suggested “I will make a moon and maybe it will turn into a planet later.”
When the papier-mâché was cleared away the children wanted to be very hands on in upgrading an area of their forest. We have a natural den behind our snack area and the children have been helping to take the wheelbarrow to the bag of woodchips, they have used trowels and buckets to load the wheelbarrow and then transport it back to their den. The den has been treated to a nice new floor. The adults have stood back to see how the new space would be used and we can report that it has been used as a quiet area and a changing room when our young actors have wanted to put their costumes on before bursting onto our forest theatre stage.
This has not been the only renovations our area of the site has had – the children have helped paint their pallets with blackboard paint so their climbing area could also double as a mark making canvas. The concentration was amazing! They worked hard together to paint each of the slats, giving it enough coats and making it look very neat and tidy. It didn’t take long to dry and soon it bore a rainbow of colour!
The weather soon got over the Monday Morning blues and gave us glorious blue skies so it was back into the river we went, wading through ankle deep water to see how big the conkors on the Chestnut Tree had gotten and see if any blackberries remained on the brambles. The bounty of huge blackberries had doubled since our last visit and each berry hung like a precious stone set in a necklace. The children helped collect some to take back on site and one boy in particular was keen to help Xiao carry all the ones he had collected.
Miriam has also been supporting the children decorate our rule board and the children have placed their handprints on it and have labelled them with really cool names!
Red group have been experimenting with the paints this week – creating different effects with hands, fingers and other resources from the forest. Their mud kitchen has been bursting at the seams with blackberry jam. When not busy making natural conserves, the children requested Miranda’s help in making a bridge on their pallet climbing frame. The children used loose parts and had to try several attempts and different ideas to make the bridge sturdy but eventually they had used all their engineering skills to make it work! There has been a range of role play that has happened as a result, children pretending the bridge is the one over the river crane and they role-played being educators and children going wading, exploring the magma in the centre of the Earth and climbers on volcanoes. The children have also been talking about the new children who will be starting next week and we have lots of them volunteering to help the new children learn the rules of the forest and show them the best areas to play!
We are so happy that the children are thinking inclusively and want to take responsibility to help and befriend the new children in order to help them feel part of the group.
We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham