Our Week in the Forest...
We’ve had a lovely week welcoming some new, and some past friends back into the forest. It’s always interesting to observe the change in dynamic when holiday campers come; often starting off a little shy, tending to stick together in the common knowledge of none of them having been before. This lasts for all of about 10 minutes, until our regular children start proudly teaching them the rules and showing them around camp. Having children up to age 7 is a real treat for our Little Forest Folk-ers as the children who are used to being ‘the big kids’ now suddenly have other children to look up to and new ideas to latch on to.
We have had lots of different activities on offer for the children this week, and lots more activities that came about through their own ideas and their imaginations. We had Ticky and Tacky and Jackie the Backie, Jim with two noses and Jo with the bow (these were not new children or educators, but paper dolls from Julia Donaldson’s story). Some of the children enjoyed drawing these dolls, before cutting them out, whilst others came up with new names and some just preferred to listen to the story.
It was also a real treat for some of our holiday campers to get to use tools. Our regular children confidently explained the rules about how we keep ourselves safe. The children then cut pieces of wood into their chosen length which could then be turned into rockets. Once they had used the bowsaw, they then took their rockets to the art area where they used coloured card, leaves, pens, pencils and tape to build a cone for a nose and flames coming out of the back! As the week progressed, so did the children’s imaginations (and ambitions!) – each day the educators seemed to be tasked with helping them make something ever more elaborate. By the end of the week what started as a simple rocket ended with a launch pad, training centre, control room, opening and closing door and astronauts that could fit inside. Thankfully our children are all very imaginative so although this was the request, the reality didn’t need to be so extravagant.
At the start of the week the children enjoyed making dens and this was another activity that ran throughout the week but was changed and moulded by different children that came on different days. The children enjoyed scavenging branches that would be appropriate for their dens, and then enjoyed all manner of role play in the dens once they were complete. As the week progressed, the dens changed from being ones the children could fit in, to making houses for the forest fairies. The principle remained the same but now the children were looking for much smaller twigs and sticks, adding swimming pools, pine cones for Christmas trees and even chimneys!
We always love having new faces in the forest and it’s always so rewarding to hear how much the campers have enjoyed it. A major part of that enjoyment is down to how welcoming, friendly and fun our regular children are and we’re very proud of them all for that!
We hope you all have had a lovely week and we cannot wait to see what next week brings!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth