With this August being a cooler summer than usual, the ideas around fun in the forest have been brighter than the midday sun. The week started off chilly, with almost a damp feel in the air, so Educator Sam decided it would be a great idea to have a campfire. He started off with asking open ended questions, to see if the children could recite the process of what we need to make a successful fire. Once the campfire was burning, the children congregated around on the log benches and lots of nursery rhymes being sung ensued. One of our Little Forest Folk-ers talked about toasting marshmallows, and how it smelt, so Sam scaffolded this learning opportunity into a sensory activity by putting a few different objects onto the fire, to see if there were any noticeable difference in the smell. This started with a banana skin, which didn’t smell very much at all, before testing a leaf, this only smelt a little bit. We didn’t have any marshmallows, so an experiment was carried out in attempting to toast an oatcake on the fire instead! Whilst this didn’t have a particularly strong smell either, the children noticed how it developed a small thin layer of black around the edge.
A bit later on, once the fire had burnt itself out, and it was once again safe to go near, the Educators gathered together the remnants of charcoal, and these were used in the afternoon for mark making. Our Little Forest Folk-ers have also been very busy decorating off cuts of wood at our Bowling Club site this week using chalk also. Some fabulous mark making and patterns have brightened up the surfaces with wonderful drawings including a terrific mermaid!
We continue to welcome some of our alumni Little Forest Folk-ers for Holiday Camp. They have thoroughly enjoyed being back as one big group with all of their friends. We have also begun to welcome some new children to our group, and we've been very proud of our Little Forest Folk-ers in having done a stellar job in helping our new younger children to settle in. We also welcomed a new Educator to our team this week, Jemima, who we are delighted to have on board with us.
We hope that you all have a great weekend, and we look forward to welcoming you back next week for more forest fun!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth