What a beautiful week we have had in the forest this week. With the sun shining and the summer weather here, the children made new friends and were reunited with old as we began to merge our bubbles. The foxes and parakeets have loved getting together each afternoon to play with their new and old friends, sharing their interests as friendships blossom. All together, they loved taking turns playing our forest made version of bowling using tyres as balls to roll and recycled bottles as pins. With this being a wonderful game, it inspired the children and educators to think of more games as we turned the forest into a fairground! It was filled with so many wonderful games such as bowling, as well as hook a dinosaur, target throwing and knocking down the cups. There was lots of cheering as the bottles and cups were knocked down and the children took wonderful turns, showing each other support by clapping as their friends tried their hand at a game.
This week we had World Ocean Day and our wonderful eco-council couldn’t miss an opportunity to educate their friends and celebrate it. Across the forest we had boats made from cardboard boxes and crates as the children set sail around the world. They talked about all the things we might find in the ocean, with sharks being the favourite of many. However, our bright eco-council also thought about the things that could be in the ocean that could hurt the wondrous creatures, such as plastic. We thought about how the plastic might hurt the animals as we created our very own ocean. The children filled a tough tray full of water and placed in all of the sea creature toys to explore. Then they added some of our recycling plastic to the tray and watched as it floated around bumping into the animals and trapping them. The children then cleared the ocean of all the plastic to make sure the animals were safe from it all and we spoke about how some animals might eat it and be hurt. We then learned about all the different foods that sea animals eat in the ocean too.
With the warmer weather here, we have begun to see some butterflies around our forest. Each day a new and magnificent butterfly appeared around the forest and the children would come over to watch it and marvel at its beauty. The children have been making their own butterflies too, some of which have been hanging around the forest from the trees. We used paint and sequins to create symmetrical patterns, talking about how symmetrical means it is the same on both sides. For others, we made paintings using all the colours of the rainbow and then folding the paper in half to create a symmetrical pattern. The butterflies were beautiful, and the children were so proud to take them home to show their families.
One of our children also brought in their silkworms again this week to show to all of the Little Forest Folk-ers and we were able to see how much they have changed! Last time we saw them, they had begun to create cocoons. This time, some have begun to hatch and so we were blessed to see the beautiful white moths and their wings as they crawled around their home. Some have even started laying eggs ready to have more silkworms to start the process again. The children found their lifecycle fascinating and began to pretend to be silkworms themselves! They acted out their life cycle from wriggling on the floor to wrapping themselves in material before hatching with wings!
We hope you all have had wonderful weeks too and we hope you have fun weekends!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham