Spring is finally here! The glowing sunshine gives our spaces a glorious feel and the warmer weather creates a perfect environment for additional water play, even sans waterproofs! Here, educators attached pierced bottles, funnels, hoses and containers at height for everyone to experiment with as they wished. Children loved playing with all of these “fountains and waterfalls” and these setups enriched the usual kitchen play with extra liquid ingredients like milkshake, orange juice and ice cream being mixed into culinary delights!
Creativity continued around the forest floor as children and educators designed and formed lovely little houses for tiny stick people. Outside the structures we made gardens with fences and pinecone bush boundaries, patios and decked areas by scraping and pushing leaf litter and balconies with stick plants - all ideas were welcome! Inside we made kitchens with pebble stools and bedrooms with comfy lichen beds. Rooms were partitioned with lines etched into the ground, and sticks laid into squares and rectangles. This was such a great project with many hands joining in over an extended period, adding in their own parts. We even had cooks to the side stirring up bowls of cake mix for the little kitchen being created! The time spent here was filled with plenty of chat about life at home and sharing wonderful details about the things that the children have within the world that’s closest to them.
Tending to our bowling club land continued at the start and end of the week with helpful hands pulling out last year’s wildflower gardens to get ready for some re-sowing. Clumps were placed into the wheelbarrow, or in perfect piles around the patch. These were then transported to our compost bin to add another essential layer into the mix. Next, children took turns working with an educator to lever up the soil to create a great surface for the seeds to take root on. We’re all really looking forward to the flowers that arrive from the early summer months and can’t wait to see the bees and butterflies that are enticed by all their glory too.
Long may this weather continue, and we hope you all get to play in some sunshine like we have all week long! See you all soon!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth