Our Week in the Forest...
A visit from the “Queen’s Friend”
This week we had a very exciting visit from the Vice Lord-Lieutenant, Colonel Jane Davis OBE QVRM TD DL, to present the Queen’s Award to James and Leanna! The children were excited all day to meet the “Queen’s friend” and were talking about it all morning before she arrived in the afternoon. The presentation took place outside the glorious Chiswick House and the children enjoyed cupcakes as the parents celebrated with Pimm’s. It was a lovely event and the children were able to have their picture taken with the “Queen’s friend” before saying our goodbyes and heading back to Piccolo.
This week we have also been busy doing some forest school activities. The first activity was making forest mobiles using string and natural resources that we found in our forest. The children selected their chosen objects and then tied them to string, before hanging them up to make their mobiles! This activity was great as we were able to talk about quantities, size and measure as the children considered each of their choices. We also had some “sticky label” activities... These consisted of a piece of card with a strip of double sided tape, which challenged the children to find objects to stick to the card following certain themes. The themes we chose this week were: the colours of the rainbow, different textures and different smells. Each child was given one of these themes and then went out to explore the forest to hopefully return with a decorated sticky label. This was a great success and we had a fabulous variety of outcomes. One child decided to choose her own theme and found small twigs and then individually spelt out her own name on her sticky label!
There has also been an ongoing theme of pirates this week, which seems to have taken over from Superheroes. This has developed into the child-led imaginative play, using trees as masts, fallen logs as ships and planks for the adults to walk! They have built bridges across crocodile filled moats and searched for treasure using maps they have made from the chalk boards and chalk.
As the week has progressed we have also been saying goodbye to some of our long serving Little Forest Folk, some of whom have been with us from the very beginning, as they continue their adventures and start their reception classes in September. We want to say a big thank you to the parents for letting us look after these beautifully imaginative, explorative and talented children and we will miss them all very much! Please come back and visit us during future Holiday Camps!
It has been a great week overall and as this term comes to an end, we look forward to an action-packed Summer Holiday Camp, welcoming familiar and new faces to our beautiful forest!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick