Welcome back sunshine!
The warm weather made a welcomed return this week, bringing with it a fantastic week of adventures! The sun has meant that we have had to move some of our exploring areas to more shady places, but they have been just as exciting and full of fun things to do. The imagination tree is always one of our favourite places to spend the day, with its endless amounts of branches to be climbed and the umbrella of leaves that hang above us to make for the perfect shelter from the heat of the sun. The mud kitchen also makes for a great shady area allowing lots of space for mud and water play, along with being a lovely area to have a rest and read some stories.
Recently each of our groups has had their own ‘magic box’ which has a new activity or resource in each day. This week we have had a volcano experiment, a mixture of different coloured shapes and a map to explore. The children were particularly fascinated with the volcano experiment. They sat patiently while we put some mentos mints into a bottle of coke. The children sat and spoke about what might happen, and how big the explosion would be. They counted down until it bubbled over and counted to see how long it lasted for. They then all looked at what happened to the mints inside the bottle. It opened up a conversation between the entire group, with everyone joining in and putting their thoughts across.
This also happened with the shapes that we had in our box on another day. In a smaller group, the children took time out to sit and go through the different colours and shape names in the box, chatting about them with their friends. The children then moved from looking at the shapes cut out from paper to looking at them in the environment around us, comparing the circles on logs to the triangles we saw in between some of our branches.
We have also had a lovely delivery of some new mud kitchen pans this week, much to the delight of our Little Forest Folk-ers! Two very large pans have made for so many exciting and fun games this week. We have been making mud soups, they have been used as drums, and also as containers to carry other objects. The children have loved being able to use larger instruments as part of their play and having the freedom to do what they want with them.
When using them as drums the children turned both pans upside down and found some sticks to use as drumsticks. The lids were then used as percussion instruments and the sounds of our new forest band could be heard across site! Everyone took it in turns with the instruments and loved seeing who could make the loudest sound!
Writing names seems to have been something that a lot of our children have shown an interest in this week. Whether it be on paper or in mud, there has been a lot of time taken to show off our mark making and letter writing. The children have enjoyed showing that they can write their own name, and then this has gone on to writing other people’s names. They have been proud of themselves for being able to write their names and it’s a joy to see how much happiness this can bring to our children.
The children have all been enjoying this lovely warm weather and having a chance to keep watching our forest change as it goes through the season’s transitions. We have been looking at the leaves that are beginning to fall from the trees, as well as the start of conker season bringing some extra discoveries.
It’s amazing to watch as our children notice something new about the forest every day, and how much joy it can bring to them!
“Just like a bee needs a flower; a child needs nature.” - Brandi Rondinelli
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon