We’ve had another busy week in the forest as our children have been continuing to work very hard on our bug hotel project. This week the children continued their practise of using tools and could remember all of our safety rules when using them. We cut thin tree cookies from a branch using the bow saw which we then explored drilling holes through. Some of the cookies were so thin that when we tried drilling a little hole through, we accidentally would drill into the mud in the ground! Once we had made holes in our tree cookies, we gently placed them all inside the layers of pallets before then starting to build the next layer on the top. This layer took quite some time. The Little Forest Folk-ers all helped to dig the mud from the ground and collected a whole bucketful! We then all sat around the bucket, sifting through it for any little stones, twigs, bark and bugs. After this, some of the children had a brilliant idea to speed up this process, to use the colanders from the mud kitchen as mud sieves!
We all took turns to ‘sieve’ a ladle of the mud until it was all just dirt. We poured our bucket of dirt onto a ground sheet with some water before folding it over and doing our special mud clay dance. The children danced by jumping, twisting, hopping and wiggling all over the top of it. We even had one child tell us they knew the name of a special dance move and could show it to us, and it was the running man! Once our mud clay had been all mixed up, we used our hands to shape it and stick it to the pallets making caves, tunnels, alleyways and even a speedway for all the bugs to visit. As the little houses were being created as we squelched all of the mud through our fingers a bumblebee landed on one of the houses showing us all how much they love their new home we’re creating.
Imaginations and creativity have been bursting through the forest this week as all the children have been busy exploring the junk modelling and cardboard creations that they could make. Everyone has continued to love the cardboard cut-out walkie talkies where the children pretend to be the educators as they say numbers and talk to each other through their walkies. The children have also been exploring with Sellotape and masking tape and how they could join their creations together, so the rockets quickly became jetpacks that were stuck to their backs as they zoomed around the forest. Binoculars from kitchen roll tubes even made appearances in both of the camps to spy on the birds around the forest. The children were very excited when we spotted a mummy duck with all of her beautiful ducklings. We watched them through the fence as they swam up the river trying to count all of them. After several attempts of counting as they kept moving and being so little that when they stopped swimming up the stream the current would whisk them back down, we think there were nine!
The Little Forest Folk-ers have been creating their own new maths game this week. We discovered some seashells and wrote numbers on each of them, which the children loved. They hid them all around the forest and then others would have to find them. Once found, they had to count out who found the most as well as try to recognise the numeral written on it. Some of the children said this was too easy and thought about how it could be made more challenging. With a little help from the educators, it was decided that when it came to finding the shells, you would have to find the shells with a specific number on only. It was a wonderful game that was created.
We hope you all have wonderful long bank holiday weekends!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham