The rain didn’t dampen the creativity this week. In fact, puddles helped to immerse ourselves in an underwater theme that continued from last week, where we had lots of fun playing with a ginormous green net. On set up this week, educators collated as many books as we could find about sea creatures, so that these filled the reading spaces. Children particularly enjoyed the wonderful rhymes in “Sharing a Shell” and “Tiddler” by Julia Donaldson, and the numerical rhythms of “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” by Dr Seuss.
Alongside these stories, Matt and Jemima set up a crafting activity where children could make their very own octopus. With a variety of cardboard rolls, children were able to decide if they wanted to make a mummy, a daddy, or a baby cephalopod. We were able to talk of details and features like suckers and camouflage, with everyone also joining in with naming spiders, crabs and lobsters as having 8 legs, with the latter two having an extra pair of clawed limbs. Great scissor practice followed as hard card in an unusual shape was negotiated, then more focus for gluing down little snipped out eyes and pupils, a few sturdy presses on the hole punch to make sucker parts, and some careful pen lines for happy smiles finished them off nicely.
Crafting with card continued later in the week as children excitedly made Dan cards, pictures, and presents as he turned “lots of fingers” years old on his birthday this Thursday! Here, we saw some thoughtful and kind messages being written with some excellent pencil and pen practice on show. Educators, as always, ready to support children as they need it, were able to model letter formation and help those involved think about the phonic sounds of certain words. So, for D A N, we talked of diplodocus dinosaurs, donuts, and dogs, ants, ambulances, avocados, and apples, then nets, names, nails, nectarines, and everyone’s favourite here, NATURE! As we reel off these words, the conversations around them are playful yet meaningful and entirely enriched with relevant development opportunity. Conversing with children is such a joy!
At Little Forest Folk we use the “read, write, inc” letter cards to help our children begin to recognise and sound out letters, and children of all ages genuinely love playing with them. Even if they just enjoy collecting, holding, and treasuring them, whilst that may not seem like the right way to use them, it does begin to help children value the importance of script, so we would recommend finding some for home too if possible.
We hope your weekend isn’t too blustery and you can stay cosy to recharge for next week!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth