The week began with more conker fun being had by both teams, with particular play around ‘marble runs’ using long pipes raised on logs. Everybody loved seeing their conker roll out the other end, and Matt even had a stopwatch that helped some children identify that raising the pipe with blocks would speed up the conker. Playing with cause and effect activities in this exciting way will lay the foundations for understanding basic science concepts as they develop. Younger children showed their can-do attitudes and experimented to find their own way of getting lodged conkers down, and soon they came to realise that rounder spherical conkers are better at rolling than flat edged ones.
The shelf life of a conker is its real asset, so we would highly recommend trying to find the last few that are falling from trees this weekend, before the squirrels do! They are perfect for including in ‘heuristic play’ for little learners who will benefit from imaginative role playing with them and also for mathematical moments for those who are keen to group, sort and count. In the forest the children have also been interested to learn that the caterpillar of the Leaf Mining Moth eats through the inside of the Horse Chestnut leaf, and we have been able to see the ever-expanding brown trail that it leaves in a leaf as it grows.
Green and Red team were also able to share an exciting creative and expressive activity together that was created by Dan. With paintbrushes attached to metre long lengths of bamboo, children had the opportunity to paint onto a fixed length of paper in between the ribbon boundaries. Recent research has shown that some children interpret the conditions of mark making at a ‘table’, with paper directly in front of them, akin to the real work that adults do, and therefore become less engaged. Activities like these enable children to see that mark making doesn’t have rules, which will ultimately lead children to push their own ideas and imaginations even further. Here, the children loved challenging themselves to master the complexities of the unusual tool in their hands and it was so nice to see friendly interactions between them.
At the forest, the leafy ‘confetti’ from the trees quicken their descent, and on adventure walks this week the Green Team found a green frog whilst walking through the marshes. Here, we were able to have an excellent nature talk where children were able to discuss our lovely message about how we need to care for the animals around us that we share the forest and the rest of the world with. The children always show real concern for the little beasts around us, with one child, mid mud cake making, able to save a grub, show her friends and then place it in under a leaf to protect it. The frog was eventually advised to get ‘safely’ back to its ‘house’ and the children continued off on course to run, roll and slide down an incredibly muddy hill.
We hope you have a wonderful weekend, hopefully you are able to collect some conkers before the squirrels do!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth