Our Week in the Forest...
We have been bathed in lovely warm pre-spring sunshine this week and there has been a massive increase in building and construction. The children have set themselves to plastering, mud brick building and we even replicated our very own Saturn!
At Paradise, the children have been using mud to create concrete and “mortar” which one of our children knew all about and explained it to all of his friends. Using sheets as walls and cardboard as a roof, the children set themselves to plaster the whole of the building before using paint to “make it look nice” once the plaster has dried. Our older children have thrived in taking the role of builders and songs like “bob the builder” have been sung during construction periods. Once again this is a real team activity where children are able to give themselves meaningful roles within the team.
Over in the forest, we have been blessed with the most beautiful weather, and the children have started to talk about the sun and other planets. In a drawing session, the children were drawing their very own rocket ships using sticks to mark the ground. The rocket took flight but we had nowhere to land, so our Little Forest Folk-ers decided to create the moon. “It’s so close” remarked a friend “we need to fly further, let’s go to Saturn”. As a group, we discussed how Saturn is so much bigger than the sun, but the children were gobsmacked to see how large it was when we marked it out on the ground. Using leaves and sticks, we marked out the edge of the planet to give it definition before our friend explained to us “it has rings, look I’ll show you!”. He continued to etch out a ring around the middle of Saturn and his friends collected and placed sticks in the groove. We will continue to mark out the different planets over the coming weeks, looking at size, shape and distance.
We have also been using a lot more clay this week to create a whole manner of funny animals and objects. Clay is a fantastic language for the children to express with, especially for younger ones with limited language. One child created a snail, taking inspiration from the three baby snails that he found in the forest. Whilst others have created robots, birthday cakes, snowmen and the crowd favourite: the sausage!
Have a lovely weekend everybody, see you next week and enjoy the sunny weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth