Our Week in the Forest...
It has been a wonderful week in the forest, a week in which the children have their used fine motor skills to great extent to create fun and interesting objects. Teamwork has been an organic result of the way that the children play and learn in the forest, as they have worked in small units in role play or construction based activities – a great sign for our social and communicative stars of the future!
Of course, as we pull towards the Christmas period some of the children have started singing festive tunes. The children’s current favourites are ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’, which has inspired talk about reindeer and what they like to eat. So, as a large group we created our very own reindeer food to leave in the forest just in case they need to stop off in the forest to fill up their bellies. This is a great task where the children are able to communicate about the needs and ideas of other beings. We worked as a team to mix oats, further grains, cinnamon and honey to create magic food. Throughout the activity the children showed the deftness to integrate and mix the food together patting the feed and rounding it to make balls whilst communicating about all things magical.
We have also continued to decorate our post box, adding magic glitter and intricate drawings of snowflakes and other festive ideas. In the forest, we created our own paper chains – the children were able to create their very own unique paper chains by selecting different colours and motifs to add to their design. As always, we used the chance to look at the shapes and mathematics involved in everything that we do in life, by counting the number of chains or how many points each different snowflake has.
As our children grow and continue to make strong and fluid relationships the emphasis on working as a team has come to the fore. For example, a group of young 3-year-olds became a team of worksite builders, as always, the interesting dynamic to monitor was the way that the group naturally took to certain job tasks that suited their abilities. Dismantling a den and creating their new “boat house” the older children took the logs down before passing them to the others who worked in pairs to carry the logs to their new location. By using simple communication like “Here you go” or “Carry it over there”, they were able to delegate jobs to each other, happy to be part of a collective group working towards a unified goal.
Have a wonderful weekend everybody, see you next week!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth