Our Week in the Forest...
What a week we have had in the forest! One of the things that continue to amaze us most is how welcoming our regular Little Forest Folk-ers are to the holiday campers. It has been a joy to see how quickly the holiday campers have settled into life in the forest and a significant part of this is down to how inclusive the other children can be. So much of what we do is to help children become confident, empathetic, little humans and there isn’t anything much better than watching a child go up to someone, who looks a bit unsure on their first day, and ask what their name is or if they want to hold their hand.
In the heat of Paradise, we have continued to carry out activities in the shade and water the allotments. ‘Grandma’s House’ has become not only somewhere to escape the heat of the sun but somewhere to escape reality too. Throughout the day it may well be Grandma’s house, but other times it will turn into a restaurant, an aeroplane, a jungle and we’ve even been told ‘this is our forest school, here’s where we have snack.’ The children continue to expand their imaginations through role play every day and we as educators do our best to facilitate this, helping to build, stretch and scaffold their learning as they sail across oceans, zoom in helicopters, sneak past dinosaurs in the jungle or defend their base camp against baddies.
The Windmill continues to offer new and exciting adventures every day. The adventures have become something everyone enjoys, and letting the children decide where they want to go is crucial to this. We have explored ‘the hill’ where some children choose to spend their time running up and down, countless times, never seeming to run out of energy. Others prefer to make it to the top and then play there, where there is more of a breeze while others choose to play amongst the trees. We have walked through parts of the forest we have never explored before and made it to a new pond. Here the children enjoyed watching a heron catch fish, quite amazed at just how many he caught!
A fallen tree at our base camp also provided a lot of excitement. Not only was this an added obstacle for the children to practise their balancing and climbing on but some of the sticks were used to create a bus. Children would find tickets and hop on or off depending on where their stop was.
We hope you’ve had as many giggles this week as we have and we look forward to more of the same again next week!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth