Our Week in the Forest
As the very hungry caterpillar crawled it’s way up the tree branch, beneath him sniffed the detective dog Nell, searching for insects, sticks, stones and leaves for whatever the Little Forest Folk needed. Sir Scallywag came riding through the forest with his band of merry men hot on his heels: the Ninjagos were not going to escape him this time. All the men caused Peter Rabbit and his friends to scurry away into the undergrowth and with Mrs Armitage cycling through, it’s probably best that those little bunnies stayed there!
Everyone loves a book, and at Little Forest Folk we like to create stories as much as we like to read them!
Read. With the sun shining down with some vigour this week, the Little Forest Folk took shelter amongst the trees and set themselves up with a good book or two. The independence the children show in selecting their own reading material and then, without asking for an adult, carefully reading through the chosen book is a real marvel to see. The Little Forest Folk are engaged, selecting different things to identify on the pages and counting, reading or pointing to things for their own amusement.
With some of the more popular books, or those that the Little Forest Folk know well, the children read to each other or to small groups, making the pages come alive without the need for restrictive words. Pirate stories gain extra “Arrrr"s, dragon stories have piles of additional “Rooooooaaaaar"s and you don’t want to know what happened to the poor woodpecker!
Drive. Building and constructing things in the forest is a great way for children to build their physical strength as well as their abilities to problem solve. Using several logs (some wide and short, some long and slim), a couple of sturdy branches and some coloured buckets on the end of another branch, the Little Forest Folk constructed the biggest car the forest has ever seen!
There was room enough for 6 children and with a blaring horn, they made their presence known across the whole forest! The children co-operated wonderfully in the making of the car but went on fantastic adventures together in it, with some getting out along the way and new friends jumping in if there was a free seat.
Those who were less worried about things mechanical still caught the building bug and were using all of the leaf litter and other resources from the forest floor to make some magical little nests, set in the hollow of a molehill. For such a small nest it held 10 whole eggs! Of course all of this is in addition to dens, hide-outs, houses and a plethora of other exotic and impressive constructs from the children’s imaginations.
Reminders
In the warmer weather
The sunshine is predicted to carry on into early next week with the temperatures rising even higher. With that in mind, we would like to remind our parents to apply sun screen before joining us in the forest, to make sure the children have water bottles full of water and for children to come in with sun hats to protect them in the sunshine.
Our recommended Summer Kit List can be found here.
Dates for the diary
Our term dates can be found here.
Save the date
Don't forget to save the date for our Summer Picnic on Friday 18th August from 5pm at Wimbledon. More details to follow on this exciting event.
Food in the forest
Our delicious Wednesday dinner:
Chilli Con Carne
Beef mince cooked slowly with kidney beans in our delicious homemade tomato sauce with garlic, paprika and a hint of mild chilli.
This is served with rice and some cheddar cheese for the children to sprinkle on the top.
Have a glorious sunny weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon
