Our Week in the Forest...
It is the end of the second week of holiday camps and the sun has been shining on Wimbledon. Our children have loved nothing more than getting out of their waterproof jackets and into high visibility vests.
This week the children have maintained their interest in maps - on Monday they used a large roll of paper and small groups of children would visit the activity and add drawings and paths onto the map. They explained their process to their friends, "This is the snack circle", "This is the green swamp and this is the witches trail!". Not before long, the roll of paper kept being extended and a super large map of the forest site and surrounding areas had been made. It was a joy to watch the children work on this together, having the opportunity to sit and listen to their stories as they drew.
It would appear that the time spent exploring areas of the forest on their adventure walks had created some wonderful stimulus for imagination and this is feeding the children's memory and recall as they make these beautiful visual representations of their world. There were also some great moments in this activity where older children wanted to use a sharpie pen to label areas they had drawn and when the younger children took interest in what they were doing, the older children then assisted the younger ones to write their names near their drawings. They carefully role modelled writing letters and the younger ones then tried to copy the letter.
Maps and storytelling also popped up more than once this week, one child was being collected by a grandparent and the child invited Gran into the Scout Hut to see the large floor map we have on a carpet near the reading area. Gran and child were pointing at countries around the world and the little girl was telling the educators all about the different friends and family members who live in those countries. This was a beautiful demonstration of how these impromptu moments can lead to rich discussion and revelation about a child's interests.
We have also had some brilliant storytelling this week as Emma took the opportunity to write down some of the children's stories they had been telling. Some featured dragons that engulfed the entire universe in flames and a very compassionate story about a boy who lost his train. These were read out to the children during afternoon snack time and the children loved having their stories shared with others. It has also been lovely to watch how the parents have valued these stories too, taking copies of them home and sharing the story together as a family. This does so much towards making children feel their work is valued and important.
We have also had a lot of interest in recording the fauna that had visited the forest this week with tally charts being kept of birds that have been identified. One day we had 4 different Robins visit the site and 3 Blue Tits. We also uncovered some long creatures in the mud and at first the children thought they were worms but when they stated crawling around the children's palms with little legs they were soon identified as centipedes and there were some discussions between the children about what makes worms and centipedes different including their colour, their eyes and as one boy put it so nicely "centipedes would win in a fight with worms because they have an army!".
We hear the sunny weather will last all bank holiday and we hope you all have a wonderful time over the long weekend and we look forward to seeing the children again next Wednesday!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon