The bowling club location provides us with an opportunity to create ever challenging human-made obstacles. Here, pallets safely bound at angles and uprights with strong knots, form the best and most fun part of lengthy obstacle courses. Educators absolutely concur that the newest September cohort of children have developed their abilities and gross motor strength so much since starting to handle these. Where once requests for hands for help and apprehension were commonplace, we are now seeing so many little ones charge along planks at height and practically leap over the vertical pallets; it’s been incredible and joyous to see in action!
Over in the forest a long adventure walks to the lake and back up the steep hill saw similar physical skills developing as feet pulled legs through boggy clay puddles, ploughed through dense rafts of leaves, and negotiated “nobbly bobbly” roots! At the lake we enjoyed a peaceful time, with smaller groups enjoying the water’s edge in turns. We were greeted by ducks which is always wonderful and saw coots picking sticks for their lake surface nests.
This week, Dan also challenged everyone with a great ladder creation, using sawn branch parts attached to a tree forming five steps up. We saw some great perseverance and many super happy smiles beaming at the top of the “crow’s nest” where some children felt they could see “the whole wild world!”
With sticks galore still gracing the forest floor, we have been picking out twigs ourselves to create little tent structures for model dinosaurs and the fairies that come out to play at night! Here, children select and sort through the parts around them for similar lengths to match those educators start the structure with. Soon, children added a bed of leaves, a front and back door, and a garden wall bordering a cleared space at the front. We loved seeing one child find an old tied string shaped like an X, and thinking “this could be the sign on the door that means no entry” which reminded us of the sign we saw by the lake that warned us about ice. We carried on talking about how the faeries would enjoy the space and we plan to write them some little notes soon for them to read after we’ve left!
Another great week here, with lovely sun drying us off in the latter half. Hope the sun stays out for you all this weekend and we’ll see you all soon.
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth