Goodbyes and Fluffkins
It's been an emotional week in the forest with many goodbyes and the sweltering heat. But as the children are used to the many natural obstacles that the forest throws at them, we know that they can handle anything, including moving onto pastures new!
If natural obstacles weren't tricky enough to overcome, some awesome manmade fun ones were set to challenge our little ones’ skills. Dan created a "Wibbly Wobbly Bridge", in which the children had to use balance and physical prowess to crawl across, without falling off. The children asked each other or the Educators to hold it still, assessing the risk and responding to it themselves. They used communication to facilitate teamwork and in no time, they worked out that the "wibble wobble" was negotiable and they loved doing it!
With the warm weather and drier forest ground, it has made the comeback of the swing possible. It's no longer a swing but has become a rocket ship to get cheese from the moon or an alternative to wings! There's been lots of flying unicorn play in the forest this week, this may have been down to the beautiful drawings that Vanessa has done for the children to colour in. Our little unicorns went to "rainbow school" which all the children got involved with, drawing rainbows in the ground with their "rainbow sticks". Vanessa's creations have seen sticks used as buildings for a mouse village, string to create pom pom jewellery and tissue to fashion little dolls!
Using any available resource to create toys shows the children that indeed any material can be repurposed, with imagination and skill. This is a wonderful exercise in showing the power of recycling and ensuring that nothing is wasted. This week the forest contributed some catkins into this exercise, which were lovingly referred to as "fluffkins"! The children created little presents from them and used them to shape the letters of the alphabet! Leaves have also been repurposed as currency to be used in our Forest coffee shop. Katie supported little ones to cut fallen leaves into circles and to write numbers on them. The forest always provides ample resources to support learning in Literacy and Maths. We're sure these skills will serve our graduating Little Forest Folk-ers well, as they transition into the classroom. Although it looks like our coffee shop will need new management, we couldn't be more excited for our little ones next steps to ‘Big School’.
We hope to see a lot of our graduating Little Forest Folk-ers throughout the Summer and at future Holiday Camps and look forwarding to hearing all about their time at School. We wish our Sessional Children a wonderful summer and for our Full Timers we can't wait to welcome you to Holiday Camp next week.
Have a glorious sunny weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth