Our Week in the Forest...
Wandsworth- The Little Forest Folk and The Big Bad Wolf
What a lovely, busy old time we have had at Wandsworth this week. It has been great to welcome back some of our holiday campers and also exciting to meet some new ones. All the children brought with them a thirst for adventure, alongside brilliant imaginations, and we have been treated to such lovely creativity and exciting games.
The big news over at Paradise is the arrival of a new flower bed- especially for us! The children were thrilled at the prospect of having our very own plot. A great team of workers was established with children loading the wheelbarrow with compost, before the next set of workers wheeled it over to the flowerbed for the dutiful shovellers to fill up. They worked so hard and with such enthusiasm to get the job done. We are really looking forward to planting our seeds. The only difficulty will be how long we can wait before we want to dig them up to see if they have grown…
The children delighted in some lovely, nature inspired games this week created entirely by themselves. One brilliant and much loved game they invented was creatively named, ‘The Butterfly Game’. To play this game some children had to morph themselves into butterflies by donning wings and fluttering around the garden. Not as picturesque as it sounds, for they had to watch out for the the eager eyes of the children who had bedecked themselves as bees over in their hay bale hive. The bees set about capturing the butterflies as magnificent treasure for their hive. There they treated the butterflies to honey, for good behaviour, or a sting if they dared to escape from their sticky prison. When the bees ventured from the hive in search of the most colourful flowers they were delighted to find our actual bees there too, and gathered round to watch them nestle into the thistles before flying back to our real life hive.
Inspired by our new book, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’’, by Lauren Child, we had a lot of fun playing ‘What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf’. The older children worked on matching the right number of steps they took to the hour they had been given by the wolf. Meanwhile one of our younger children, in the guise of the wolf, had the brainwave to count their fingers to help them work out what time it was. That way they realised they could give more challenging times to their victims, such as ‘8 ‘o’clock!’ They then had a great time very gently gobbling one another up.
Over at our Windmill site the children have also been inspired by our ‘Goldilocks’ book and enjoyed an inspired re-enactment of the much loved tale. Busy in their house they enjoyed tucking into great big bowls of porridge and taking long walks to let them cool. Before we knew it the children had gone in for a shocking twist. The Big Bad Wolf was coming to call on the bears. The bears, Goldilocks and the Wolf were completely absorbed in their terrifying tale. After much method acting, the children finally came to a terrific solution for dealing with their problem neighbour. They set about writing a very stern letter which they posted on the door of their house, ‘Mr. Wolf, don’t come down our chimney! It will be HOT HOT HOT!’ After that they were never bothered by the Mr. Wolf again and they all lived happily ever after.
Blackberry Bonanza also hit the forest and the children had fun identifying and collecting a big tub of blackberries which they delighted in mashing up to make a lovely deep purple dye. Travelling back to the sixties it was time for a spot of that long forgotten Vogue favourite, Tie-dying! Using squares of white fabric the children worked on their fine motor skills by twisting pipe cleaners carefully and tightly around their pieces of fabric. The designers then took turns dunking their fabric into the dye, before unwrapping the pipe cleaners to reveal beautiful tie-dye pieces. Some attached them to their bags to create a new and glorious ‘IT’ bag, whilst others used theirs to create must-have flags. We are all about sustainable, natural fashion here at Little Forest Folk. If you can manage not to eat all the blackberries the next time you are out foraging we look forward to seeing you all at drop off in your new blackberry tie-dyed wardrobes.
Thanks again to you all for a super duper week here at Wandsworth. Hope you all have a terrific weekend, full of ice creams and sunshine!
Have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth