Our Week in the Forest...
Everywhere you look during this transitional stage between winter and spring you see change. Being in the forest everyday you see the change of weather from freezing cold at points this week, to revitalising sunshine, which has a huge influence on the environment we learn in every day. Day on day, and week to week we see amazing changes in your children - finding new interests, playing with different friends and being engaged in new activities to make sense of the world around them.
With the wheel of change starting to turn, we have tried to really focus the children to look at all the small details within their environment. On Tuesday, we set up an environmental curtain. A series of hanging mobiles that the children can hang up their found materials on. We challenged the children to find objects from the forest floor around them specifically asking them to find objects of different colour, different texture or different smells. The children came back to us with a variety of materials; heavy stones, sticks, moss covered sticks, red leaves, green leaves, brown leaves, grass and more. Their endeavour was great to see and learning how to tie the materials using knots will help to develop fine motor skills. We are looking forward to when Spring really hits, it will be really interesting to revisit the mobiles we have made through this period to identify how and what has changed in our forest environment.
A recurring interest for the children recently have been nests and eggs. Each time the children encounter a new “nest” the children’s behaviour towards the eggs has changed. The first two times that the children were exposed to the provocation they were all eager to have their own egg. To take it with them and nurture or play with it themselves. Throughout this week, the children have started to leave the subjects within the nest discussing as a group what the eggs need to develop and hatch. Discussing the warmth by covering the eggs with leaves so the ‘wind doesn’t make them cold’, to making sure that nobody stands on the eggs by forming a protective circle shows a real love and care for the natural environment that our children learn and play in.
Have a lovely weekend everybody! See you next week.
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth