Our Week in the Forest...
It has been a magnificently frosty and icy week in the forest. As always, the children and educators have relished the changing environment, showing adaptability and unbridled energy to stay warm and positive. A noticeable factor of the children’s play this week was their openness to delegate and understanding that each task requires a variety of different roles.
This week’s adventure walks have been even more magical than most. Each day we set out through the forest with its magical glistening ground and lots of interesting frozen puddles to be explored, smashed and investigated. One child remarked “It’s just so beautiful, it’s like we’re in a cloud”. The children applied their scientific minds to test how quickly the ice melted in the sun and how the time differed to ice under the shade of the trees.
We also had our very own stage show this week. The children continue to create fascinating stories which they are eager to record and act out later in the day. On Tuesday, the children created a re-make of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Using tarpaulin and a set of pulleys a stage and curtain was created. One particularly shy child found this to be his calling and started to direct his peers with tasks to fulfil. “OK, you two can pull the curtain up and down. You are the giant, you are Jack…”. The actors made their way behind the curtain waiting for the ‘director’ to start proceedings. “OK, start”. The curtain lifted and with beaming smiles they moved onto stage. And so, the play continued as the children fulfilled their parts, under the instruction of the director informing the actors the words to say and where to act out. It really was a wonderful display of the children’s abilities to work as team, give and follow directions and show such pleasure in achieving a goal as a unit.
We also had our very first dance class at the bowling club, which was a huge success. The lovely Carl needed no help in engaging the children in fun, up-beat dance moves which the children pulled off with flying colours. It was a full body workout than only our wonderful Little Forest Folk-ers can achieve after a whole day in the forest. If you think that your child (full day children) would be interested in attending the dance class, please do let us know as we would love for it to continue.
Have a lovely weekend everybody, let’s hope that we get to build some snowmen next week!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth