Swing set up
The weather this week has not been dissimilar to this time last year, when the days heading into the bank holidays were bathed in sunshine. This has hastened the bursting of buds and our time spent outside is as vivaciously verdant as ever. We even celebrated the birth of our first few little sproutlings in the Bowling Club entrance, that were sown by the Green Team two weeks ago. First out of the gate are petite purple shoots from the beetroot seeds and children and educators alike are excited to see what pushes through next. We’ve also seen some fab photos of children next to sunflower saplings planted here; we particularly love that one of the sunflowers shoots has been named after our educator Cici! We’d love to hear about everyone’s progress, which can also help children to hear about number talk when measuring.
The green thumbed theme continued on Monday as Green Team children enjoyed planting pansies into a hanging basket. Katie, having brought in several trays of flowers, prepared the activity and supported the children throughout. Everyone was thoroughly engaged and listened well to best practice around these delicate plants but intrinsically had their own ideas about ways to get the job done, whilst deciding on a beautiful colour scheme. Red Team had similar fun planting another basket on Tuesday back at the Bowling Club and Matt supported one child to hang the basket up high. A focussed activity like this is rich in language, which is embedded into ever expanding vocabulary with the repeated routine. Here, children expanded on colour knowledge with the visual of mauve, burgundy, cream and violet and learnt to “tease” the “tangle” of roots to help them grow. This activity is also especially great for fine motor skills and coordination, with spoons of soil steadily transported to the basket, before squeezing the bottom of plant trays hard, then delicately pinching the stem base to pull them out delicately. Moving forward, we will be taking responsibility for the hanging baskets at the Bowling Club which will be a continuous learning opportunity for children as they take on ownership of the appearance of their space.
This week Katie also brought in a bicycle wheel, with the idea to decorate it with ribbons and fix up somewhere, so it spins in the wind with its new colourful tassels on full display. Children from both teams loved choosing colours and with the red and green pieces in abundance, some observantly felt that “it looks like Christmas”! Educators were on hand to start initial knots with the children helping to pull ends tightly. From this point, the children weaved the day away and were very excited about their achievements often proudly exclaiming “look what I did!”. Educators have been having a good think about a variety of activities that take advantage of the wind (that seems to enjoy our open bowling field as much as we do) and we anticipate making windsocks, windchimes, and more windmills with recycling in mind, over the coming weeks.
As well as these creative activities, large swings have been set up by Simon in the forest this week, which the children absolutely love! Beyond the awesome fun, these provide for excellent turn taking moments alongside an understanding of the relevance of personal safety and the safety of our friends too. Here, the children are always asked to remain behind a fixed rope square on the floor, placed about a meter or so away from the furthest point of the swing motion. Good listening and a solid understanding of safety that permeates the day in all our activities really helps the children understand risk whilst enjoying all the benefits risk brings to development at this young age!
We hope you all have a well-deserved lovely long weekend, and that the weather plays nicely for us all!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth