Our week in the forest

Well we couldn’t have asked for a more magical start to the week when a feathered forest folk-er swooped down to join us at lunchtime! The children (and adults!) were entranced by a tiny blue tit that sat on various adults’ shoulders-even perching on Phil’s finger at one point! This led to lots of discussions around why the blue tit had come to see us; “he wants to be our friend” and “he trusts us” were common thoughts! We also spoke about where he might live and wondered whether we would see him again.

Role-play games, as always were popular once again. This week we have been postmen, using wheelbarrows to transport very important letters around and posting them through the “hole in the tree letterbox”! Some children have also enjoyed exploring patterns and making tracks. We discussed how to make long, short, wide and narrow tracks. We explored the mathematical concept of measurement as we counted how many steps it could take to complete the track, and that some children needed more steps than others to do so. We discussed the reasons for this and one of our helpful big boys explained that “I am big so that means my feet are bigger than yours”.

Our Creation Station continues to be a really popular space to explore in the forest! This week we have made hedgehogs and butterflies with the children, at their request using resources including feathers, paint and natural treasures like leaves and stones. Some children are showing an interest in mark-making, giving meaning to the marks that they are making using chalk on one of our large chalkboard painted table tops, informing us that they are writing signs/ their names/ a story…. the list goes on!

At the children’s request we wheeled in some extra water to make the mud kitchen wonderfully full of thick, oozy mud! The children were delighted by this and spent a long time highly engaged in making mud meals for all their friends! We have discussed why the areas of the forest are so dry (“because the sun dried up all the water and it needs to rain more” we were informed by a knowledgable three year old!) and the children are visibly excited for more rain and the eventual return of the swamp area. I’m sure they won’t have long to wait! In the meantime we will continue to make the most of the glorious Autumnal sunshine :)

News

We bid a sad farewell to Claudette, our lovely driver this week. Claudette is trained in driving busses and has decided to pursue this interest of hers. We have already been training up our new driver, Les. Les is Jenny Allington’s father and has already been a hit with the children. He will be our full time Wimbledon driver.

We hope that you have all received your new waterproofs by now. I sent out a newsletter earlier in the week with care instructions. Just to reassure all of you, on days that we return from the forest very muddy we will rinse down all of the waterproofs. So hopefully you will never have to take home any extremely muddy ones!

Bookings for October holiday camps have now opened. If your child is booked in for sessional days and you would like to book a few days in the holiday please do so!

Dressing for the weather

We're due to have more moderate temperatures next week, but we would still recommend putting sunscreen on your child before they arrive.

As a guideline next week the children should be wearing:

ONE pair of comfortable trousers (jogging bottoms or leggings)
One t-shirt
ONE fleecy zip up jacket (in a backpack just in case)
One pair of socks
Wellies or trainers (as long as you don't ind them getting dirty!)

We hope you have a lovely weekend!