Our Week in the Forest...
This week we had a little ‘set-up guru’ swap at Little Forest Folk. Sam, who sets up amazingly at Wimbledon went to the Wandsworth site and we had Amy and Katy from Wandsworth joining us at Wimbledon. The reason for this is to share ideas in terms of how we set up the forest and ensure we are continuously able to provide the children with an exciting and diverse environment in which to play, explore and learn. Katy and Amy are masters of rope play so we have had lots of interesting rope activities going on. The children have adored trying out different swings; using a rope climbing frame and various rope-based obstacle courses. Great activities to promote the development of physical skills but also problem solving and negotiation skills as the children work out whose turn it is next!
You might recall, a few weeks ago Sam made a ‘swingball’ activity in the middle of base camp by using a rugby ball attached to some rope. At the end of last week, he extended this by drilling a hole into a tennis ball to permanently attach a piece of rope to and the children have been requesting to have it out it ever since! They have been ducking under it, trying to catch it and counting how many times they can make it go around and around. Endless fun with a simple tennis ball and a piece of rope!
Last week the children really enjoyed creating a large-scale piece of artwork using paints and printing with logs, sticks and stones. This week Leia extended the activity when she found some acorn cups. The children had to practice their fine motor skills to hold these carefully and loved to talk about the circles they could print! We could make size comparisons too, as the log ends made bigger circles than the acorn cups. Earlier in the week we also hung out a large sheet for the children to paint on - another success! We have really noticed the children showing a strong interest in this communal artwork recently so will continue to think of new ideas to develop this further.
On Thursday, the children were delighted to arrive at base camp to discover that a tree house (tree platform!) had been built by Sam! They loved trying to climb up to perch here and watch the world go by. For those that were interested we extended the activity by using ropes and sticks to create a ladder for easier access. As you can imagine this was such a popular activity - we used the opportunity to encourage those that were waiting, to write their names down on a list, so that we could see who was next up.
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon