With the volcano erupting in Iceland over the weekend, this week has been all about volcanoes. The children are fascinated by them and loved watching a video of the lava so naturally we had to make our own. The children got busy digging the mud and taking all the stones, worms and treasure out of it. Once we had enough, we emptied it all onto our clay dance mat, poured some water on it and began to dance. The children twisted, jumped, stomped and shuffled away to the music until our natural mud clay had been mixed. Each of the children then took some of the clay to make their volcano. Then came the part all the children had been waiting for... making them erupt! Each child erupted their own volcano by putting in some spoons of bicarbonate of soda and then pouring in some vinegar. The lava went everywhere! We had stick people needing rescuing from it so the leaf helicopters with firefighters and police came to their aid as the stick people continued running towards the next erupting volcano. Throughout the week we have seen imaginations take over with Thunderbirds and the Paw Patrol rescuing friends from tops of volcanoes and from lava with bridges being built as safe passages across.
We’ve explored numbers and letters we’ve cut out this week and used them in our artworks. Some noticed that if we turn the numerals and letters as we stick them, they look like different ones, such as ‘3’ looks like a ‘W’ and a ‘7’ is a bit like an ‘L’. Using numbers in our art, sparked a wonderful discussion about our age and when our birthdays are. We explored the months of the year and seasons that fall in them, talking about the signs of the different seasons and seeing what we could see around the forest for what season we are in now. With all the buds and the daffodils, crocuses and bluebells starting to bloom, we decided Spring must now be here and will be staying for a little while.
Our mud kitchen cafes and restaurants were in full swing this week with the children devising some delicious menus. We’ve had pasta, mud pie, chocolate cake and soup concocted from local ingredients in the forest. Mud from just a few metres away along with leaves, sticks and puddle water. We’ve also enjoyed adding condiments to the meals this week as we used water we collected from the rain to fill old paint bottles to use as sauce and condiment bottles. Everyone loved squeezing out the water into the pots and pans as they served the dishes to their customers.
The eco school council this week have been busy getting all their friends involved in encouraging global citizenship. Each day when singing our hello song, we have chosen a new language to sing it in and looked at a globe for where that country was. We’ve also been taking care of lots of baby trees, weeding them and making sure they are getting ready to be planted around the forest soon from their pots. We’ve been thinking about where will be best, somewhere close to the river for water but where they can be safe until they grow a little bigger. To prepare for our upcoming planting, we have all made some wonderful watering cans using recycled milk bottles. We poked holes in the lids and used them as our spout as weird poured our water over our herb garden and the trees we planted last week.
We hope you all have had a lovely week too and we cannot wait to see what next week brings!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham