Our week in the forest...
An Ice Week in Fishponds Wood
The winter wind was blowing hard, through the trees and bushes: their spindly arms set a-shivering. But along came an intrepid band of children, with steaming breath and hearty songs of twinkling stars and bus wheels. Cold? They laughed, giggled and played through the cold, warming themselves and each other with their smiles and joy.
It has been a tough week weather-wise in Wimbledon. With freezing temperatures, the children have done amazingly to keep their spirits and imaginations alive and have shown themselves, as always, to be incredibly creative and resilient Little Forest Folk.
Ice, unexpectedly, has taken centre stage again this week but with some glorious new examples of it for the children to see and interact with. During an adventure walk, the children came across an entire pond that was frozen over and were able to discuss what the ice is and its properties with great knowledge and insight. The children also relished in cracking the ice, both at the pond and everywhere else it occurred in the forest and the shards were wonderful prizes for their efforts: “like glass” with “bubbles” and weird and wild shapes!
Stories and story books are really helping the children to grapple with literacy and through the interactive story telling that was going on, the children weren’t simply left listening and shivering. Great flocks of witches and wizards flew their broomsticks through the forest with some incredible techniques developed by the children in holding their brooms. Flowers (or at least the dried remains of the summers Ragwort) were also picked in abundance to ward of baddies from castles and ships alike, and providing the children and adults with a new and unique protection in the forest!
Further through these stories, and the children’s own penchant for superheroes, goodies and baddies took a prominent role in the children’s imaginative, collaborative play. With this has come some brilliant physical activity in the form of running, jumping and climbing all around our meadow and newer areas and the picking of the dried flowers also gave the children a good challenge for their strength. Testing different plants allowed the children to assess which they were able to remove and which they couldn’t, and which might be better suited either to stronger children or could be removed with a little team work.
Food in the forest:
Our current menus can be found on our website HERE
Swede, parsnip, honey, butter bean soup- jam packed with veggies!
