Last week saw children fascinated watching ladybird larva transforming into adult bugs and we had lots of conversations about other insects and animals that make radical changes to themselves as they take a leap into adulthood. This had included the caterpillar's transformation into butterflies and moths.
This week the children got to experience caterpillars build their cocoons and emerge as butterflies. They thought it would be a nice idea to release them into our forest. As you can image, this created a lot of excitement. Miranda gave children time to come and look at the butterflies, noticing their different colours, markings and sizes. The children wanted to get our identification sheets and try and work out what types of butterflies were inside and there was great opportunity to compare the features in the identification sheets to the little creatures inside the net.
Eventually, it was time for the butterflies to settle into their new home. Miranda hung the net to a tree and opened it and the children watched how the butterflies approached their emancipation - some flying out immediately and twirling themselves through the warm air, off to make new homes in the forest, while others approached it with more caution. Sitting in their net for a while longer, slowly stepping out and fluttering their wings before deciding to take flight.
We had another child use their home experiences to teach us all something new this week. It seems a child has been studying a new plant at home called a Venus fly trap and learning lots about it and they couldn't wait to share this with their friends in the forest. He used his hands to demonstrate the opening of the mouth and with confidence he explained "a fly will go in and it sends an electrical signal, like the one you have in your brain and the mouth will close on the fly and it will not open for another 10 days and the fly is left as a husk!" From this, arose lots of play as children used their fingers to pretend to be flies and flying to his open hands, waiting for him to send the electrical signal and close his hand (jaws) and there were lots of "now it's my turn to be the fly trapper!" There was also lots of singing from Xiao and Miranda as the theme kept making them think of the musical "Little Shop of Horrors".
There has been a lot of water play this week as we explored ways to have fun and keep cool in the building heat. We have created more rivers in the shade, complete with gushing waterfalls, we have had ice exploration, we have rested with our feet in water and made observations of how this made the rest of our bodies feel. The children took a different approach to watering the vegetable garden - using a "one carton of water for the plants and one over me!" method! Finally, this ended with playing under the rain at the end of the week - dancing and cheering as the air temperature changed giving us all a sudden surge in our energy levels!
We hope you all have a wonderful weekend and we look forward to new adventures next week!
We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham