This week we’ve noticed the days are getting shorter and the evenings are arriving sooner than the days before. The plane tree continues its preparation to sleep for the winter and like the animals in the forest we are getting ready for the cold weather by wearing warm clothes and eating lots of nutritious food to keep our bodies healthy and warm.
In the forest, we were introduced to the food group pyramid where we learned about food that is healthy and nutritious for our bodies. We focused on the proportions of each of the food groups we should eat per day. We discovered that to keep our bodies healthy, we should eat a lot of grains, vegetables and fruits, a bit of meat, dairy and fish, and to eat sweets and cakes as a treat.
Our craft table had a cornucopia of tasty fruits and vegetables and we had the opportunity to observe them in more detail. We peeled onions and counted how many layers they had - we liked their pungent and sweet smell. We got to look at the patterns of patches on apples and felt the grooves of eyes on potatoes. Some of our friends made a tasty salad, and we enjoyed hearing the crispy crunch of lettuce being torn.
As the days get cold, we thought we’d help our woodland friends get ready for winter by making a hedgehog house. We collected small twigs, dried leaves and straw to stuff into little boxes to make a cosy bed. We cut a little door for the hedgehogs (or other small creatures) to enter before putting them around the forest for our friends to find and have a warm bed for the night.
We also enjoyed days of mushroom hunting. We packed our magnifying glasses, our handy mushroom guide and a pair of binoculars and scattered around the forest and peered into bushes, under logs, behind crates and pallets to find elusive mushrooms. With our 'No Picking, No Licking' rule in mind, we spent time observing how lovely their colours are and their unique shapes. We counted how many spots each cap had and matched it to a number on a tray. The one-spotted mushroom went into number one, the two-spotted mushrooms went into number 2 and we kept counting until we got to ten.
We finished the week off with pumpkin carving. We learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin and how they grow from sleeping seeds into large fruits growing on long twisting vines. We also liked looking inside the pumpkin and feeling how cold and slimy the flesh is. We were very creative with making jack o lanterns. Some are very scary while some look very funny.
We’ve enjoyed our autumn adventures this week and we’ll be back next week with another update of our next adventure!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham