The inclement weather was certainly a large feature at the start of our week, but it didn’t stop play one bit!
In the forest, Dan has continued to make even more complex rope walk constructions. Fellow practitioners are genuinely amazed at the unique rope and knot techniques used to create such marvels in the forest, week in week out. These hand weaved wonders don’t just test and push physical development, but in aesthetic style they are able to help with ideas around shape and number. This has been done in the way that a series of rope lines form giant triangles, zig zagging up and down to suspend a ginormous thick branch for manoeuvring across, or in the way exactly ten circular loops form the “monkey bar” support section above a slack line.
String also became a huge feature one morning when children were given free rein to use an entire spool of twine as they wished! Absolute fun ensued! Turns were taken to loop the string up, down, in, out, all “around and around and around” the trees and branches across the entire span of our site. Some children used scissors to snip, creating new ends to carry on the ginormous forest knitting event! A good third of our forest site was turned into a series of “spiders webs” and “traps”. Several educators did get tangled and caught in these traps and webs, to much delight indeed, giving the children great feelings of success! As with many of our resources we always find several more uses for them, and during the lunch this string was re-wound, with children helping to collect all the smaller bits they could see to recycle them for play another day.
In the craft area, an arachnid theme continued on from the folklore story being told last week. Here, Vanessa and Jemima supported those who wanted to make a spider, with cutting felt and fixing together a spider on a string. This could then be used in play, and we could see that these were much loved “pets” throughout the day.
Also on the art area, children have enjoyed the opportunity to write a letter to Santa. Firstly, paper was folded into the right shape with triangles coming into the middle. As this was happening children were asked about what they might like and were helped to draw these items. Moments like this, are joyous and help educators to get to know the children even more, as the talk moves around ideas of family and celebration at this special time of year. We hope that some of you were able to find some of these sealed letters in bags this week and enjoyed some of the explanations about what they were!
We’re absolutely looking forward to celebrating the season more next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend and we’ll see you soon!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth