Our Week in the Forest...
It has been an exhilarating week in the forest here at Wandsworth. The children have shown us how well they have been able to adapt to the colder conditions with careful supervision and hard work from our wonderful staff. We have been utilising more physical and gross motor games throughout the forest to really encourage the children to understand that movement and energy helps us to keep warm and feel good about ourselves. At the other end of the spectrum, a lot of our children have been inspired to create more of their own stories which have been read at lunch and snack times.
A common mistake that can be made once it gets cold is just to wrap the children up in loads of layers and hope that they stay warm. Although it is very important to be wearing the correct clothes, the most important factor that allows the children to keep their body temperatures regulated, as well as having loads of fun, is to be very active. One of the favourite group games of the week has been stone statues, a game where the children have to really follow the rules for the game to be successful. Playing in a mixed age group helps the different ages to develop different areas of their character.
For the older children it’s their chance to demonstrate to the younger children how to act when playing in a group environment, using their words and their bodies to demonstrate. For the younger children, it’s their chance to be fully involved, learning new language and feeling the rush of partaking in a game where everybody is giddy with anticipation and excitement. The games aim is for one stone wizard to “catch” the others so that they become stone statues and they then have to stand still ‘frozen’ until everyone is caught. It’s extremely fun and active.
We have continued to use the autumnal forest “treasure” to create our own artistic impressions of what we see around us. This week we have focussed on creating our forest curtains. The children find their favourite pieces, mostly beautiful brightly coloured leaves, twigs, stones and my highlight of the week which was an old snail shell with nothing inside. The children then help tell the educators the order that they want to hang their materials from top to bottom, before assisting with the tying of the items to a hanging ribbon. The magic of these activities is that the children are really able to fully engage with the changing environment around them, noticing fine detail changes, for example the slight changes from red to yellow on the leaves on a particular tree - informing them that natural objects have a natural life cycle.
A new subtle inclusion we have made this week is to incorporate story times on the mini-bus journey to and from the forest. However, we have done this with a slight twist to normal, selecting a story that normally targets a slightly older audience: ‘A Boy Called Christmas’, that does not include pictures. We have challenged the children to really use their imagination and their listening skills to formulate their own idea of what the world looks like. So far it has been a massive success, the Jaybirds in particular are yearning to listen to the story more and more and as a result have shown a massive creative interest in making their own Christmas story. The story has been edited to be suitable for all children and everybody has been really keen to listen to the calm readings.
Have a lovely weekend everybody and we look forward to seeing you next week!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth