Summer may not have quite seen the memo that it’s meant to be sunny but even through the rain we’ve all still been able to have a great time. After all, mud rules!
The start of the week saw the children create one of their longest masterpieces yet, painting with a blackberry mixture all along and over 10 meters of wallpaper. Firstly, everyone helped to pick the little lumpy fruits, listening well to instructions about choosing the right colour, and remembering not to lick fingers or eat them! The start of this activity, is a totally tangible way of getting everyone to remember the “no picking no licking rule” on account of the berries being too low and potentially tarnished by dogs or foxes doing their thing. We have since heard this detail being repeated by children as we pass budding blackberry bushes in the forest which demonstrates excellent listening!
Next, everyone took great turns mashing the berries, and incrementally adding water until we felt it was the right consistency. We used an assortment of tools; from big thick bashing sticks like pestles to start, through to wispy wand sticks like whisks to blend. Here we got to talk all about size and introduce lots of lovely new descriptive words to children’s vocabulary. Soon, after children worked together to roll out and weigh down the canvas, everyone was getting very creative with plenty of different great styles on show!
This week, we have also been supporting children moving on to big school, to make their own traditional Mexican decorations, called God Eyes. We have reinterpreted parts of the tradition so that the woven string element represents parts of forest school life, so children can remember the awesome time they had here. After joining two crossed sticks, the weaving can start with a helpful song made by one child that goes “I twist it, you turn it, I twist it, you turn it”. As an example, Red twine represents being on Red Team, the blue hues represent the sky and the lake, the yellow is the sun, the green is the forest and the trees, and the traditional twine is the mud! These can then be hung up or kept as treasures and we hope that some parents can help children reflect on these great times in magical surroundings.
We hope you’ve all had a great week and maybe you can join us in doing a sun dance this weekend to shoo away some of these clouds!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth