This week the children’s imaginations have reached new levels! Once again we have had limited resources available and it really seems to promote wonderful play scenarios. We have made (mud!) ice cream with sprinkles and built fires to cook various findings!

Some children spent ages carefully threading leaf fish onto skewers in preparation for cooking, a perfect forest activity to promote their fine motor skills. We have been adventuring, looking for treasures and sailing on our boat… being very careful not to disturb the forest crocodiles!

In addition to the ever exciting discovery of worms and slugs we had some little mouse friends joining us this week. The children (and adults!) were delighted by this and sat for ages observing them, remembering to be quiet and still so we didn't frighten them away. We were amazed by the children's self control during this activity - it's not often we're quiet in the forest!

The children have, as always enjoyed challenging themselves physically with lots of bouncing, balancing and perfecting their skills on the rope ladder, which has been especially popular.

We have explored mathematical concepts of measuring length and discussing height as we made comparisons with long pieces of grass. We spoke about which pieces were long/longest/tallest and "taller than us!" After all this the children surprised us yet again with their creativity and began producing grass sunglasses!

News

We bid a sad farewell to Merlin this week who has been an exceptional practitioner and a wonderful friend to the children. We will miss her greatly and wish her every happiness for the future.

Katherine has had a very successful first week in the forest with us, some of you may have already met her and can see for yourselves how lovely she is. She has been so popular with the children and is quickly making firm friends in the forest!

We have Philip joining us next week for some training ahead of his move to a future LFF site. We welcome him to the forest and are looking forward to working with him for a couple of months.

With Beatriz and Merlin both sadly moving on this month, we have been observing their key children carefully to see which other adults they gravitate towards. It's been an interesting week of observations as we've noticed that with the new faces in the forest a lot of the children are playing a little with their relationships.

The new dynamic in the group and the excitement of the new adult friends to play with is altering some of the children's favourite person so we plan to spend another few days observing and then will use our findings to reallocate new key people for the children concerned by the end of the next week.

It's really fascinating to see the children building on their personal and social development skills by making new adult friends so easily but still maintaining preferences for certain friends.

Dressing for the weather

Next week is due to be slightly warmer so please remember to pack a sunhat in your child’s bag and apply their first layer of sun cream before drop off.

As a guideline next week the children should be wearing:

One pair of comfortable trousers (jogging bottoms or leggings)
One long sleeve t-shirt
One fleecy zip up jacket (in a backpack just in case)
One pair of socks
Wellies

Lost property

Our lost property box has now swelled to three boxes full! As a reminder, the lost property boxes are available in the foyer of the scout hall Monday to Friday from 4pm-6pm if you are missing any items you'd like to try and track down!

We hope you have a lovely weekend!

Little Forest Folk