This week the forest has been full of little chefs with both pretend cooking and real cooking! To help fight the cold each day we have had a lovely and toasty fire to sit by and do some cooking on. As we spent a little more time indoors this week, it was the perfect opportunity for us to practice our chopping and peeling of different vegetables. We had spring onions, peppers, garlic and ginger to explore the texture and smells as we prepared them. Later on we were then able to cook all of these vegetables with some noodles on our fire to create a delicious Chinese stir fry as we continued to learn about and celebrate Chinese New Year. The fire has also been the perfect place to warm up some milk to make comforting hot chocolates to enjoy while warming our toes and singing some of our favourite songs. The children decided that because we have had some more snow, one of the best songs to sing at the campfire is Jingle Bells as well as London’s burning.
We have been busy with lots of crafts this week as the children were inspired by the snow and Chinese New Year. We have been making snow mosaics out of fabric and cardboard in lots of different shades of white and blue which the children were very proud of. For Chinese New Year, we have been making some Chinese lanterns that the children have seen in the Chinese New Year story book. The children noticed all of the pretty lights in the story on the page of the Chinese New Year Party and requested that we could make some for the forest. Some of the children also thought about how cold it had been for the animals in our forest and suggested we help them by making some more birdfeeders again. So, we once again mixed all of our seeds and suet together and poured it into moulds to set in. As it was so cold outside, the feeders set very quickly for us to hang up on the trees for the birds and by the end of the day, we were able to watch some birds come down from the trees to tuck into their new feast.
Our Chinese New Year Dragon has been a big talking point this week with the children. As we all had turns playing on the meadow, the children noticed steam coming from the vents of the basement of Heatham House. What could this steam be? A dragon! It had to be hiding in the basement to keep warm. But then one morning, there wasn’t any steam, so where was the dragon? It had escaped! Off we went on an adventure walk through the wilderness part of our forest looking for our dragon. We searched high, low, in the tree stumps and under the bushes, then in the distance through the trees there was a speck of pink. “Look the dragon is over there” the children exclaimed as we headed towards it. It was hiding in some trees, but how did it get here? The children shared their ideas about why it might be there, including it was thirsty so trying to find the river, it was looking for food and it wanted to find somewhere quiet to sleep. After much debating, the children decided that it could be hurt and that’s why it was there, so we had to rescue it. The children worked together as a wonderful team to help the dragon out of the trees and carried it all the way back to camp so that we could look after it, put a plaster on its poorly wing and nurse it back to health.
We have had such a wonderful week, we hope you did too and have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham