Our Week in the Forest...
After the half-term holidays, it was great to welcome all of our sessional children back to the forest again! The weather has been a big talking point this week as we have experienced wind, drizzle, heavy rain, hail, sunshine and even a bit of sleet. We talked about how sleet was a mixture of rain and snow and the children tried to catch the cold flakes on their tongues! Our Little Forest Folk-ers have also enjoyed watching the raindrops create giant puddles on top of the tarpaulin and used a stick to release the water in one big ‘whoooosh!’. Some children were even brave enough to stand underneath the ‘waterfall’ with their hoods up, enjoying the thrill of it! This created some brilliant muddy puddles which the children have fully embraced! We have been splashing, squelching and sliding our way around the forest.
With some lovely new pots, pans and utensils in our mud kitchen, there has been a hive of activity. On Shrove Tuesday, delicious pancakes were on the menu which resulted in some wonderful collaboration amongst the children. They took it in turns to add the ingredients (mud, leaves, sticks, water) and stir the mixture up. Once the mud pancakes were cooked, we spent some time adding our favourite toppings – lemon and sugar, peanut butter and banana, and strawberries – yum!
Face (and hand) painting has proven to be very popular again this week! Hannah has been working her magic to create various animals and characters that the children have requested. We have had tigers, lions, butterflies, bat man, bat girl, spider man and Elsa and Ana from Frozen. It is always exciting to see the children’s delight when they look at themselves in the mirror and step into their different characters. On one occasion, a group of children were the characters from Frozen and they built a Frozen house with sticks decorated with icy blue chalk! We also had superheroes coming to the rescue to save people from the mud!
This week we welcomed new playworker Rosa to the forest and welcomed back playworkers Louis and Lydia. The children love to meet new staff as they show them around the forest and most importantly, they teach them the forest rules! They enjoyed making music with Miranda and Rosa using different instruments – some children were drumming, some were jingling bells and others were shaking maracas. Some children also made their own instruments using sticks and logs as drums. They listened carefully as they followed a rhythm and tapped along to the beat!
Around the fire, Xiao and Lizzie have been doing some lovely group sing-songs including ‘Ging gang gooly’ and ‘Five little fire fighters’. Our Little Forest Folk-ers have been brilliant at remembering the rules for being around the fire, with the older children helping younger ones when needed. The children have been practicing the ‘respect position’ when adding sticks to the fire. The fire has been lovely for warming up cold fingers and we have also been lucky to use Miranda’s super duper hot water bottle hand warmer which she kindly made for us.
With the site being so muddy, we have continued to take small groups out on adventure walks along the river and have been playing lots of active games on the lawn such as ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’, ‘Traffic Lights’ and ‘Duck, duck, goose’.
We hope you have a lovely weekend and see you all next week.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham