Hats, gloves, robins and slugs!
We’re starting to feel the chillier days rolling in, the children are loving the change in their environment, finding the muddiest parts of the paths, and seeing how squishy they can make the mud by changing the texture with their stomping boots. Everyone loves to talk about what colour hats and gloves they’re wearing; the children are so happy when they notice that a friend of theirs have matching hats or gloves! The children use their independence brilliantly while choosing which gloves they would like to wear during different activities, and are learning our forest tricks of ‘rub-rub-rubbing’ our hands together, and doing our favourite dances if we start to feel cold!
The Fox group have based our play in the Mud kitchen this week, the children love to explore the many little pathways through the bramble, and play peekaboo behind the trees! Our climbing ropes have been a favourite this week, the children help us to decide where’s best to tie them up, and how tricky our climbing activities could be! The children love to challenge themselves, watching their friends climb higher and higher is the best motivation to climb higher themselves! There’s been so much support between the children, “you can do it!” and helping each other if someone is feeling stuck. Their friendships are growing so beautifully, and this encouragement between the children is making a visible impact on their day, so wonderful to see!!
There’s been lots of amazing teamwork in the bunny group as well! The children have been exploring the base came to look for the best material to make their new den! Branches and logs have been collected by everyone, with help from our friends, we can do anything we set our mind to! The den has provided shelter on our rainier days, and is a perfect reading corner!! As well as reading, the bunnies have been really enjoying crafting activities with our natural resources. Sticks, leaves and twine create beautiful star shapes, as we learn about measuring and counting skills.
The children have loved to take their play out onto the meadow, the wide open spaces and soft hills are such a lovely place to play, even in winter! We love to play running games, especially when Kai turns into a hungry monster!! We chase and run and role with the tires along the grass, and have a look out for the slugs and other creatures that live on the logs!!
We’ve also been really interested in clocks and time. This started last week then the children began stepping across the logs in the circle, going round and round like the ‘hands of a clock’. We drew numbers on the logs like a clock face, and we love to look at which numbers the hands are pointing to on the teachers’ phones.
We’re feeling more and more Christmasy by the day here at Wimbledon! Christmas music plays as we eat our meals, we take turns picking which Christmas songs to sing at the snack circle, and talking to our friends about how we’re going to celebrate with our families! We love looking at the Christmas lights in the scout hall, and we’ve started to make our own paper decorations! A few days ago we even found a twig of holly with red berries on the ground of the forest! The robins sing us songs as they find the crumbs of bread we’ve sprinkled, and foxy puppet is learning some Christmas songs as well!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon