Our Week in the Forest...
We’ve had such a lovely week in the forest, made especially exciting by the addition of some mums and dads. We hope you had as much fun in the forest as your little ones do!
Parents appearing in the forest wasn’t the only exciting thing that happened this week though – some of our children received their new winter waterproofs and the new colours made for lots of exciting games. The bright green waterproofs had children hoping around like frogs. Now that slightly wetter weather is back it makes finding frogs easier; the children looked under rocks and logs and down holes before mimicking how frogs move. This led to counting how many hops it took to get from one side of our camp to the other, discussing how high we could jump, and we even had a long jump competition at the bowling club where the children put tape down on the ground to mark how far they could jump.
One day this week we went on an adventure up to the hill. The hill is always one of our children’s favourite places to go, but on this occasion, it was made even better by the discovery of hordes of snails. The snails appeared to be migrating from one side of the hill to the other and the children were eager to “help” them on their journey. In the forest, when we find something, just like an army of snails, or a rabbit hole, maybe a colony of ants or a stag beetle, the line between disturbing the animal in their natural habitat and letting the children have a learning experience is always a fine one. On this occasion a number of children hunted for and collected (what we think were) a mixture of banded and garden snails. They counted them, and then left them safely on the hill to continue their migration, the children throughout the rest of the day made special snail homes in the hope that they might come to visit us. It was a lovely example of how ‘in the moment’ planning can be so valuable for the children and the learning is directed by them.
Stay and Play was a small insight into what we do in the forest; digging in the mud, swinging on the swings, singing songs, telling stories, making up games and building dens – activities where the children can just be children and play, letting their learning and developing happen naturally.
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth