Our Week in the Forest...
On Tuesday morning, the forest awoke from a Bank Holiday weekend to the sound of our Little Forest Folk-ers, full of energy and curiosity as they ran towards the meadow when they suddenly noticed something unusual. A super large canvas lay on the grass, which sparked the magic of creative play. A group of children worked collaboratively to make a Little Forest Folk masterpiece – they spread glue over the canvas and began to stick items they had found in their natural surroundings to it such as leaves, flowers and pieces of grass. Sam was on hand to help children gather resources as their vision for the art piece developed throughout the day – they layered their collage with splashes of paint and even discovered tubes of spices in the resource bag and sprinkles of Turmeric and Paprika gave the creative play another sensory dimension. The canvas remained available all day for children to keep adding to and by the end of the day it was sparkling with sequins and another layer of grass. The canvas has pride of play in our scout hut hall and if you get the chance you should pop in and take a look – the children will gladly talk to you about it, as they have done with the big Forest Folk this week.
Many cultures around the world have tree-dressing ceremonies and the children took opportunity to take part in their own with a focus of thinking about why trees are important to us and what we might want to thank the trees for. The children made beautiful decorations and some of the responses included “thank you for telling me your secrets” and “thank you for the leaves and for playing with us”. Later in the week the children enjoyed the Dr. Seus story ‘The Lorax’, a story about an advocate who tries to defend the trees that are being chopped down and destroyed. Children drew their own tree champions and have had conversations with the big Forest Folk-ers about the special powers their champion has that are used to protect the trees. Their superheroes had a range of powers such as fire and ice to make anyone trying to damage the trees think twice!
The children discovered a baby frog and they got busy building their new friend a special garden using grass and sticks. They used conversation to focus on what the frog would need to make it happy and then made small adaptions such as making the grass wet. The children observed the frog for a considerable amount of time as he or she went in and out of their new habitat. While the children went to lunch the frog decided it was time to go and find a new home of their own but he or she left behind a memory that was still being talked about all the way back to the scout hut!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon