Our Week in the Forest...
Autumn is blowing its last gasps as most of the leaves have now tumbled and the icy grip of winter is starting to take hold with the temperature starting to fall. However, in the words of Charles Dickens; “Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own.” This week has provided many beauties of both Autumn and Winter, with the children making colour scopes and castles from the fallen leaves and then jumping in icy puddles. It has been a really great week of exploration.
The children spent the early part of the week collecting and organising fallen leaves from the ground and arranging them into colour coded order. Some of them guessed that “If the leaf falls from the top of the tree it will be lighter, and if it falls from the bottom it will be dark”. It was very interesting to see how some of the children organised their colour charts in straight lines, and others into a circular shape.
For others though, the leaves were to be used as a construction tool. Using warm, wellied feet, the children scraped the leaves to a central point and started to build a huge leaf castle. Once satisfied that the structure was up to scratch, two children climbed to the top of the structure and proclaimed themselves to be the “King of castle, and you’re the dirty snail rascals”. This inspired others to build their own castles, with children competing to create the biggest leaf castles possible.
Later in the week as the temperatures started to plummet and the cold sank in, the children found icy puddles in the forest for the first time this year. For most children, this was a long-awaited return of the fun cracking puddles, for others these were the first icy puddles that they have seen in the forest. Starting from metres away, the children took long run-ups to come running and jumping into the ice, “Crack” cried the children with glee. Then after most of the icy puddles were discovered and destroyed, one child took a really close look at the ice itself, “this looks like glass... I can see you,” he stated, looking through the translucent ice. We are looking forward to seeing how we can use ice in different ways in the forest – for tool work, painting, carving and more.
It has been a really fun start to winter! Have a lovely weekend.
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth