Our Week in the Forest...
If you had entered our forest site on Monday, you may have seen the beautiful orange flames of our very first forest fire session. Lizzie, our outdoor forest school legend, was the one who successfully built and maintained a fire with a few children who took turns to sit by its warmth and load little sweet nuggets of marshmallows onto the end of long sticks. They watched them change colour as they toasted them before enjoying the taste of their efforts, devouring them. This also included licking their fingers clean of any delicious, sticky pieces of marshmallow that remained behind on them. This whole experience was also a positive opportunity for our Little Forest Folk-ers to practice their forest safety rules when it comes to fire sessions and we have noticed how much our older children enjoyed helping their friends remember how best to stay safe.
With the smell of fire and caramelising marshmallows wafting through the air, our Little Forest Folk-ers have been eager to explore everything that this season is introducing to the forest. We have witnessed a lot of art projects featuring the crisp autumn coloured leaves. The children have collected and adorned them with an array of fabulous colours of paint. They have also been using the scissors to carefully cut them into different shapes and we had some children proceed to include the new shapes into their imaginative play. One child was helping his leaf fly through the air while shouting “look at my butterfly!”.
If not immersed in artistic projects, our Little Forest Folk-ers have found sources of inspiration for their creative play in the loose parts they have found in the forest. A collection of mini tyres, planks and small logs were the resources that helped create a car in the morning and by afternoon, had transformed into a very challenging obstacle course. These featured raised walkways supported by the tyres, thin balancing plank walks and even a collection of slim branches that had to be walked over without the branches rolling under our feet. This was a brilliant example of how children can be part of the risk assessment process and how they can work together to overcome problems.
Later, the rain came down and our Little Forest Folk-ers were in their element! The swing found itself sitting above a large puddle which made for the best muddy swing experience ever! As children swung over it, they let the tips of their shoes brush the top of the puddle sending a wave of mud through the air (and a little over themselves). Other children chose to use pots and jugs as their tools to transfer puddle water into buckets whilst others jumped in the puddle water as hard as they could. Maybe it was to experiment with science and the concept of forces, or maybe it was for the sheer unadulterated joy of it! Either way, it was heart-warming for the educators to see that a little drop of rain didn’t affect the children’s sense of fun and adventure in the slightest!
We hope you have cosy weekends as the nights draw in (don’t forget the clocks change) as we look forward to seeing everyone on next week.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham