It’s Holiday Camp in the forest and we have welcomed some old and new friends. We’ve been overjoyed to see how well our graduated Little Forest Folk-ers have grown and are enjoying their time in forest again and it has been lovely meeting some new holiday campers too, everyone has got on so well! This week we have had a lot of roleplay, and it has been lovely seeing what our “wizards, witches, vampires and pirates” have been up to on their adventures.
Green Group’s adventure walk to the Witch’s Cabin this week prompted some wonderful game play. The children found some sticks, turned them into wands and had lots of fun casting spells and turning educators into hurricanes, unicorns and changing them into “broken” mode. Green Group created some fantastic tools, even making bows that Robin Hood himself would have been envious of. They’ve done some experimenting with pulleys, at first testing their strength by using a rope to haul a log over a branch to then having to work together as a team to lift a heavy branch using a rope.
“Any time a child works within a team, he/she has the opportunity to build positive, long-term relationships.” Even though our holiday campers on the Green Group are only visiting for one week, we know that they have made lifelong friends from their time in the forest, and it all begins with activities such as this. We also try to do as many team building activities throughout their time here because “the sooner children learn to work together, the stronger their team building skills will become as they develop into adults”.
Outdoors as an educational environment proves that "Nature provides countless opportunities for discovery, As a team over in Red Group, they worked together using a magnet to find treasure. Once they all had a coin, our little pirates celebrated! Green Group also had some treasure to find and together they created a treasure map. By using imagination in roleplay to act out as pirates or witches, this lays a foundation for the story telling activities we do with our Little Forest Folk-ers. Karen and Matt have been writing down the stories that Red Group have been telling. Matt read some of them out during our end of day log circle time and the children were inspired by listening to each other’s stories and also proud to have their stories read out and acknowledged.
Last week we had some baby cygnets, this week we were blessed to see some baby toads underneath our log in the log circle! We even spotted some “black headed red cardinal beetles” emerging from logs for the first time ever having just made their change from grubs below the bark. It’s magical moments like this that make us so happy to be out in the forest and lucky enough to witness nature first hand.
It’s been a short but sweet week in the forest, and we hope you have a lovely sunny weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth