It has been another brilliant week in the forest and both teams have taken the opportunity to head out on many adventure walks!
Sadiye very kindly brought in lots of different kinds of herbs from her garden for the children to engage in a wonderfully scented sensory activity. The Green Team crushed the herbs and mixed them together to make a marvellous potion while observing colour changes and different smells. The Red Team enjoyed rubbing their fingers against the herbs and deciding which smell was their favourite.
The Green Team hit the week off with a creative start. On Monday, the children crushed blackberries and mixed them into a watery paste to paint with. The children loved stamping their hands and writing their names onto a long piece of paper. Later in the week, the children headed out on adventure walks to observe activity on the lake. Signets and ducklings were spotted! Later on, while walking through heathland, the children each took a cup with them to collect interesting flowers and leaves they found and then presented what they’d found to the rest of the team in a show-and-tell style fashion. The children mixed their leaves into another potion and said ‘thank you’ to the Earth. Many treasures were found by the Green Team this week and they drew fantastic treasure maps to aid their search! Simon’s green dot (one of the children’s favourite treasures!) made an appearance and the children raced to try and catch it around camp.
The Red Team had a fun and watery start to the week! We filled up two buckets of water and the children enjoyed dipping their dinosaurs into the pools and set up slides and diving boards for the dinosaurs to travel across in order to jump into the water! There were some brilliant estimations as to whether certain objects would sink or float when put into the water, including clay. The children enjoyed wetting their clay and rolling it out with sticks to bake cookies and pancakes. Pinecones and shells made some beautiful imprints in the clay. The Red Team had great fun on adventure walks this week and are managing to walk further and further! The children enjoyed balancing across logs, sliding down a muddy hill on their bottoms and creating shop counters over fallen trees. To end the week, the children walked up to the stables where they said hello to some horses and a tawny owl called Merlin! Some children have gone home with cool forest bling this week (wood watches and necklaces) that they helped to saw with Conor.
We’ve said goodbye to some special forest friends this week, who will soon be starting a new and very exciting adventure at school! Both teams shared a joint circle-time across the boundary where we had a final story-time session altogether. The children proudly collected their certificates and received a cheer and clap from all of their friends. Forest wishes and hugs to you all - the forest will always remember you and your wonderful imaginations! Have happy weekends everyone.
Hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth