Awesome adventures and exciting exploring!
Into our second week of the new term and the forest has been full of fun and adventures!
There’s been an abundance of activities and exploration taking place, with the children learning new things all the time. We have been finding out more about the forest around us and all the things it has to offer, as well as making more new friends and enjoying the glorious weather that we have been having.
Our children at Wimbledon have been very interested in their balancing recently. We started the week by building our own balance beam. The children worked together to move two large logs and place a long piece of wood between them. Then, once it was checked by them to make sure it was secure, everyone took the time to walk along the plank. Some of the children started off asking for help, but after a few goes they gained the confidence to walk across by themselves. Midway through the week the children wanted to add to this and moved some more logs next to the original design. These were then used as extra steps to jump onto and to balance on. The children enjoyed having the freedom to make this amazing obstacle course in whatever way they wanted to, and then they could challenge themselves to conquer the course!
At Little Forest Folk we know that mark making doesn’t have to happen on paper. This week the children have been busy using the dried mud areas on the meadow as their canvas. They have been using sticks as their writing tool and creating drawings and words in the mud. We have been looking at how to write different letters and words that the children have chosen.
There has also been interest in using the amazing things around us to create pieces of art. Some of the children spent some time this week finding the brightly coloured leaves that have begun falling and sticking them onto paper. We have looked at the different shapes and sizes of the leaves and comparing the colours of them. Looking at all the different pieces that were created showed us that all of the forest is different, and even the same tree can produce a large number of different leaves for us to look at.
Looking at the different things that we have around us in the forest also inspired some of our children to have a scavenger hunt this week. They were set a mission of finding different things around the meadow. There were numerous things that they were asked to find, such as the smoothest stone, or the longest stick. When the children had found their item they then looked at them with their friends and compared them. It gave everyone a real chance to properly look at the difference in the objects that we have around us, and let the children explore them and feel excited about what they have found.
One of our favourite things to do at Wimbledon is go on adventure walks. These walks give us a chance to explore the areas outside of our own site and see exactly what the rest of our forest is like. This week the children went through to visit the meadow behind our base camp area and found some amazing hills to climb. There were also large trees to climb and different paths to explore. On the walk there were some large pieces of bark that had fallen from some of the trees. The children spent some time looking at these and the different patterns on them, as well as feeling them and comparing how they felt when they were on the tree to when they had fallen off. The children wanted to show them to their friends back in the forest, so carefully carried them all the way back to let their friends have a look.
Now that our newer children have had a bit more time to settle in, it has been lovely to see the new friendships developing and watching everyone enjoy and experience all the amazing things that our forest has to offer!
“The mud will wash off, but the memories will last a lifetime!”- Anon
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon