Our Week in the Forest...
The clouds and rain haven’t been a dampener on the spirits of our Little Forest Folk-ers this week and we’ve had lots of fun making the most out of the wet weather and mud! This week, we have taken the opportunity to head out on adventure walks in the mornings; climbing up the steep, sunny hill, passing ‘Grandma’s cottage’ and crossing the ‘rickety-rackety’ bridge across the stream. Back at camp, the rain led to the creation of mud cakes and mud hot chocolates. Later on we all headed into the big tent to read stories together.
At Paradise, the children started the week off with more pirate-role play and were balancing on wooden stumps in the middle of a big puddle that had formed. A mole house was built out of various leafy construction materials, in the hope that a mole might decide to settle there. Much care and attention was put into this to ensure that the mole would have everything that they needed for a comfortable living space! It has been toasty in the yurt at Paradise this week, as we have had the wood burner on for a toasty warm up, which resulted in some cosy, chill-out time for the children to relax and enjoy watching the flames.
There has been a lovely emphasis on nature this week, as Sadiye brought in daffodil bulbs for the children to plant, providing a great opportunity to talk about how plants grow. The children loved these and took great pride in finding all sorts of mulch to place their bulb into. May the daffodils live long and prosper! We hope that this will provide a nice activity for you to be a part of at home too. The children have been busy observing squirrels and a confident pigeon who keeps returning to camp. A few children walked a bit further from camp with some of the educators to a peaceful den to try and spot rabbits and foxes. To end the week in the forest, we were greeted by a frog on Thursday who was well camouflaged amongst the leaves. The children waited patiently to watch the frog jump away.
As usual, we have had great fun playing all sorts of games and making up imaginary worlds. The children became captains of ships and sailed across the seas to a place called ‘Chocolate Italy Island’ where all sorts of treats surrounded them. This play allowed us to explore the terms ‘early’ and ‘late’ as some unlucky ones missed the final call for the ferry, thus needing rescuing in the end. We also counted and took money for tickets. Most of the children teamed up in a big group to play the ‘magic blue rope game’. Here, one person went to hide the rope somewhere in the forest and then operated the walkies to broadcast a clue to their teammates as to the whereabouts of the rope. Then the hunt began!
We hope everyone has a lovely weekend and enjoys the outdoors as much as we do! For our sessional families we wish you all a great half-term!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth