Looking for signs of spring
A damp start to our week all about Spring then some glorious days!
We've been walking through the forest this week testing our observation skills as we look for signs of Spring. Our flowers are starting to bloom - we have daffodils and snowdrops popping up all over site. We explain the need to protect these beautiful little flowers so the children decided to build a protective fence around the snowdrops. We created paintings of our own interpretations of Spring, lots of bright lovely colours and collaborative painting.
Due to our resident fox on site, who the children have named Brandy being spotted a few times this week, we've had lots of discussions about animals in the forest. This evolved into discussions about which animals we'd like to see in the forest so we got out the face paints to help the children assume their roles. We ended up with lots of tigers roaring their way around the forest as well as a couple of superheroes!
We've had some bubbly fun, discussing what ingredients go into a bubble mixture to make the bubbles strong. We've also spent a great deal of time jumping around the trees catching bubbles - there's little more magical for children than bubbles... apart from bubbles in a forest.
We love the learning opportunities that come from a child-led setting. During their play this week children noticed some water in one area of the forest was still whereas water in another area of the forest was moving. The curiosity around this led to a long discussion about what the differences are between flowing rivers and still ponds amongst many other types of water. Fascinating and fun! We ended up building some little dams to stop up water flow then enjoyed releasing the dams to see the little stream in action again.
Bubbles in the forest
We've played with gravity this week. We've used guttering and have experimented with different angles of holding the guttering whilst trying to roll different weighted objects down the guttering. The great favourite was rolling things down the guttering to land in the water...no matter their weight!
Finally for cooking this week the children made pissaladiere (a French version of pizza) accompanied by parsley and pumpkin seed pesto with white beans. For pudding they had the special treat of making palmieres with a cinnamon filling. A rare treat to have a sugary pudding but worth it for children who know how to make palmiers!? Lots of bashing with the pestle and mortar to make the pesto and some beautiful cutting of the palmers. I hope some parents managed to try them they were delicious!
News
It's been very exciting to have our first open day for our Wandsworth nursery. We've had so much interest in our new nursery from parents who love the thought of the fun our Wimbledon children have in the forest every day.
We've also been starting to trial dishes for the new menu as Spring is here! Soon it will be warm enough to do away with soups and start our Spring menu. Some definite hits that will be on the menu are pea, spring onion and noodle fritters in addition to roasted vegetable pastry puffs. Delicious and chocca full of veg. Yum!
Dressing for the weather
Spring is now officially here and it's definitely starting to feel warmer and brighter but we still need our layers for a few more weeks:
- Thermal layer - M&S have some great thermal long sleeve tops and leggings
- Fleecy trousers
- Long sleeve tshirt
- Thin jumper
- Thicker fleece/wool jumper
- Thick fleecy zip up jacket - Mini Boden have some fab warm shaggy jackets on sale
- Scarf
- Hat
- Gloves - lots of pairs of gloves to ensure when they get wet we have a replacement
- Thin cotton socks
- Thick wool socks or the horrible polyester socks they sell near the checkout at H&M which are super warm!
- Wellies/thermal boots/snow boots
Next week in the forest
Next week in the forest it is World Book Day when we shall be encouraging children (weather and mud dependent) to dress up as their favourite character from a book. We also have a surprise up our sleeve for the children. We've arranged for a mounted keeper to trot on over to the site to show the children his horse. We are going to keep this as a surprise as if there are any incidents or emergencies the keeper will obviously have to prioritise these but all things being well, we hope to see him on site at least once next week.
Menu
Our children have this week devoured..... see our menu
Enjoy your weekend and we look forward to lots more fun next week!
Little Forest Folk
