We are now in October, where does the time go? This October will be a busy time for us in the forest as we celebrate Harvest festival, Black History Month and enjoy spooky activities as Halloween approaches. At the weekend one of our educators distributed our food bank collection to a local supermarket. The team were so impressed with how much we managed to collect and would like to thank you all for your generosity. We have also tried to discuss this sensitive matter with the children and raise their awareness of issues such as food poverty.
October is an important time in the UK for the nation to reflect on and celebrate Black History at home and in other countries too. We have begun to introduce this to the children via special interest books. This week the children have learnt about the incredible story of Pele’s rise to stardom and how he overcame a tough childhood to become the greatest football player of all time! The children were interested in finding out about where Pele came from and enjoyed looking at a map of the world to locate where Brazil was. We looked at photos of the Rio carnival which they were fascinated by and we practised a few Portuguese words. Excelente! We also made our own football using a sock, string and newspaper and had lots of Samba-ing soccer fun!
Another book series that has captured the children’s interest has been the ‘Meg and Mog’ collection we have in our outdoor library. To bring these stories to life we set out some jam jars with revolting labels such as ‘mouldy berries’, ‘frogs eyes’ and ‘foxes fur’ in order to make some special potions. I can report that many of the staff have now been turned into frogs!
The children have been getting musical this week using bells, shakers and pipes to accompany singing their favourite nursery rhymes. After singing a few classics and some new ones, the children left the instruments behind to join in some action songs such as ‘hokey cokey’ and ‘rig a jig.’ They have also used the voice recorders to capture the sound of their own voice and to listen back to their wonderful singing.
On a health and safety front, our Forest Folk-ers (especially our new starters) were excellent during one of our regular fire drills. Everyone responded to the whistle calmly and followed the fire marshal’s instructions promptly. After taking a register and doing a head count we celebrated breaking our own record for fastest evacuation from the forest. Great job Forest Folk-ers.
Despite the muddy conditions, the children have continued their passion for building ramps and bridges using wooden planks, crates and pallets. During one playtime, the crates became boats and the planks allowed the children to move from boat to boat without falling in the jellyfish! The staff have been very impressed with the amount of team work they have observed, with the children helping each other to move heavy objects or to make decisions on where to place things.
Making use of some giant puddles, the children have been learning about floating and sinking. We gave them a selection of objects such as plastic bottles, stones, sticks and bottle tops to see which ones floated and which ones sank. We encouraged the group to question why certain objects floated while others did not. We then found some plastic containers in order to make our own boats using sticks and string to make a sail. Some children allowed some friendly dinosaurs to come aboard their crafts and enjoy a leisurely boat ride.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham