At Little Forest Folk Wimbledon Village we like to help the children to become aware of what they can do by themselves, as well as encouraging them to use their words to ask for help when appropriate. These conversations happen throughout the day and they might not realise it, but the educators are gradually convincing them that confidence and independence are very cool!
This week we set lots of physical challenges, which required the Little Forest Folk-ers to use their developing fine motor skills, building upon what we began last week, equipping them with stamina and determination to try and try again. We kept the tweezers, scissors and paper punches from last week and progressed to using palm drills and secateurs under the guidance of educators. There were also lots of opportunities to use big gestures and work on balance and hand-eye coordination on innovative slackline, rope and swing configurations.
One morning we challenged the Little Forest Folk-ers to paint a tarp from top to bottom. They put into action their fine and gross motor skills to make broad, wide, high and low marks by stretching, squatting and keeping control of paintbrushes and rollers of all sizes.
Around camp all week we have had lots of other push and pull activities, such as pulling on ropes, weighing out items in buckets attached to pulleys and rolling logs into a circle around a pretend fire pit where we had some storytimes. There were also several walks out of camp to collect pine cones, which prompted collaborative problem-solving from the children once they realised that their buckets, bowls and bags were full. How many pine cones could we hold in our hand? How could we change the way we held them, moving our hands and arms to be able to hold more? Could we help each other - for example, having one person holding the treasure while another collects? The children certainly figured out a way to transport armfuls of pine cones back to the mud kitchen!
Hopefully you will soon start to see these little ones’ self esteem blossom as they show you what they can do by themselves. In the words of Madame Dragon from Zog by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, “Now that you've been shown you can practice on your own…”!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon Village