“I want to be the first person to fly. With wings!” said one of our children last week. Dreaming big is one of the most charming things about being young. We imagine bright futures for our little ones but more importantly, try to create an environment in which anything is possible if it can be imagined. "Imagination allows us to explore all sorts of images and ideas without being constrained by the limits of the physical world. This is how children begin to develop problem-solving skills, coming up with new possibilities". As our Little Forest Folk-ers launched themselves down the Sunny Hill, Cici placed imaginary airplane wings on them and they "flew" down, maybe one day that dream of flight could spark an engineering mindset, and we'll each have solar powered wings in the future.
It's been a busy week for the children and the Educators. We had our Inset day on Wednesday, in which we tried to put those big dreams we have for the Bowling Club site into a reality. Dan has been a dab hand at doing some landscaping, and we should have a couple of surprises in store! Meanwhile, Simon and Sam created two new puppet theatres. This will provide some great opportunities for creating puppets out of recycled materials at Forest School.
We’ve also received some fantastic wooden offcuts to use for the site which Katie has been busy painting to transform them into blackboards. We’ve recently been using blackboards to explore CVC words, 3 letter words that can be read phonetically through their phonic sounds. We hope the blackboards will continue to support children's literacy. We've also created some new flower beds ready for some more planting. The children have enjoyed going past the rainbow ribbons at the Bowling Club with Matt to plant some seeds in our new planting area, our hope is to grow more flowers and veg for all to enjoy.
Our little adventurers have also been rejoicing in the abundance of dandelions growing at the Bowling Club site, on Monday we saw "Dandelion Cakes" being served at Red Group's café. This led to the creation of menus, a wonderful writing and number exercise but it also led to lots of role-play related to ordering food. With real restaurants now open I’m sure they’ll all be extra keen to help with ordering when out. Imaginary cakes and pizza were on the menu for Red Group and the children in the Green Group enjoyed mixing up a giant pot of pancake batter with Jamie.
This week, Green Group have welcomed some new members to the Little Forest Folk family! We are so excited to have them join us and they’ve all been settling in brilliantly.
Green Group have risen to the "Rope Challenge" this week and have been enjoying various rope swings and bridges to stretch their physical capabilities. Whilst over on the Red Group they collectively built a large "Volcano" in the mud area and then subsequently ran away as it repeatedly erupted, which ensured that little legs got all of their running mileage clocked up!
Imaginations have been running wild and Green Group have been enjoying being pirates, they walked the plank and cleverly altered a parachute into a fully functioning sail. During their exploration of the seven seas and the forest they collected forest treasure on their double-sided sticky tape “Nature Bracelets”.
The Red Group have been captivated by different shades of colour, inspired by looking at and comparing different colour swatches. Shades of blue, purple and pink were used to recreate galaxies and discussions ensued on their favourite planets, they especially loved the fact that we live in The Milky Way!
Colour exploration is a great way of enhancing learning, as a precursor to maths for pattern recognition but also in cognitive development. Bolstering those imaginations, to dream in a spectrum of colours. Let’s hope those solar powered wings are available in all the colours of the rainbow and more.
We hope you all have wonderful weekends!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth