Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had a fabulous week!
What a fun week we’ve had in the forest. Each day has provided a wide variety of activities (just like the variety of weather). The children have enjoyed being able to pause and observe the high winds, watching the branches sway and listening to the rustling of the trees. In particular we have kept eyes and ears on our famous plane tree, one of the tallest plane trees in the country. This time of year is the perfect time for our Forest Folk-ers to stand back and admire it in all its glory. Aren’t we lucky! This is also the perfect time of year to dig out those woolly hats, gloves, scarfs and to increase the layers of clothing worn to ensure we remain snug and warm as we head into the colder months.
As well as weather watching, we have begun to introduce some spooky activities to the forest as we approach Halloween. As usual, we have read our ‘Meg and Mog’ story books about a witch and her cat. Inspired by this, some children have enjoyed making up their own scary stories to spook their friends. For arts and craft, one ingenious creation involved using cotton wool wrapped in tissue to make our very own ‘ghosts’ complete with spookily drawn faces and tied together with elastic bands. The children have had great fun moving around the forest with their ghost, making ‘whoooo’ noises and trying to spook their friends. Another simple yet effective way of creating hairy-scary fun has been to make large spiders webs with masking tape and constructing their own spiders out of egg cartons, pipe cleaners and googly eyes (spiders have 5!) We have looked at many different colours to turn our playdough to make it as ‘Halloweeeny’ as possible. Our Little Forest Folk-ers loved using orange paint and then using the playdough to make scary pumpkin faces!
Our children have enjoyed getting together to share song time with their peers and adults this week. One of the favourites of the forest is still ‘Hairy-scary castle’ and October is the perfect time to sing it! We have also learnt a new song called ‘The skeleton dance’ involving words and actions. This song has prompted discussions about our own body and where our bones are. If you are interested the song can easily be found online. There is an accompanying book entitled ‘Funny Bones’ which some of you may be familiar with. We will be reading that next week. How exciting!
Some of the group have taken their interest in volcanoes into a quite unexpected direction. This week has seen discussions about the Romans with the topics ranging from what they wore and how they entertained themselves to the fascinating story of Pompeii. Whilst playing with the playdough many children decided to make their own volcanoes. Some of them were very active and lava was flying all over the place! We also attempted to recreate the wonderful patterns found in Roman mosaics. After looking at pictures of real-life examples, the children cut up coloured felt into small squares and positioned them on cardboard, using glue to attach them. After completing their mosaic, one child said their design featured ‘a gladiator and a lion.’
In the construction area the children put together a ‘dinosaur train’ to transport some very noisy dinosaurs that had somehow ended up in the forest. The train was made by lining up our crates and our Little Forest Folk improvised by using leaves as tickets. Once the train was off the children decided it was off to the islands for these dinosaurs. So, using the crates, pallets and planks a set of islands and bridges to and from them were created.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham