Our Week in the Forest
This week at Little Forest Folk Winkworth we have been embracing the wonders of the changing season whilst developing our gross motor skills: walking, climbing, running, jumping and exploring maths by getting to know routes and locations and use positional language such as ‘behind’, ‘in front of’ and ‘under’.
We started the week hunting for mushrooms in the Arboretum. Our intrepid Little Forest Folk-ers set out on their adventure walk with maps of the Arboretum and laminated sheets to identify different types of fungi. It was wonderful to see the children excitedly point out landmarks and signposts that they saw on the map in real life. We soon found lots of mushrooms and took the opportunity to discuss why it was important not to touch them, that we only eat mushrooms bought from the shop or picked at the farm and if you do touch them to tell an educator right away so they can wash your hands. Then we crouched down to get a closer look. The children described the mushrooms beautifully: some were ’spiky and white’, others were ‘slimy and orange’. We provided new language prompts too - to look at their gills, to wonder if they were spongy and so on. We discussed where they liked to live and the conditions in which they thrive: in the light or in the dark? Our little explorers observed the mushrooms really like rotten wood, which opened up lots of conversation about how fungi and the forest are interdependent. The children took photos of the mushrooms with our instant cameras and ticked off their mushroom ID sheets when they found a match.
Mushroom madness continued on Tuesday, when our little adventurers hopped from numbered tyre/cushion ‘toadstool’ to ‘toadstool’ in our back garden obstacle course. They also made magnificent mushrooms out of paper plates, cotton wool and toilet roll tubes, though these were rather outshone by the spiders some of the children made using their forest school skills. This year you may have noticed the huge number of sweet chestnuts in the forest, well we put them to good use, be assured of that! With supervision, the children first placed a sweet chestnut in an (adorable) toadstool wooden screw hand vice, then once secure they used the hand drill to make holes in the chestnut. They then carefully poked and glued little sticks into the holes and with the addition of a pair of googly eyes, a very cute spider was created! It is amazing watching our Little Forest Folk-ers, some as young as two, listen to instructions, handle tools with care, practice those essential fine motor skills and take real pride in their efforts!
Wednesday was International archaeology day, which we brought to life in our back garden. After examining a real life fossil, the children rushed to dig up treasures of their own. The tuff tray revealed small finds such as coins, buttons and silver plates, which they then took to the research centre to sort into different categories and record their size and weight. Elsewhere in the garden, diggers, spades and hard hats were required to unearth larger items including ‘wheels’ and ‘brass plates’ (old biscuit tin lids). The delightful squeals of ‘look, I found some treasure’ were heard all morning! To support our learning intent, we made hand drawn maps of the garden, complete with mud kitchen, toilet tent and circle time area. On it some ‘x’s marked the spots where some dino bones were hidden (sticks painted white). Could the children follow the map and find the bones - yes they could and they did! Then some of our little ones coloured in the spare maps and added their own features, marking the places they thought there might be hidden treasure. We look forward to doing more work with maps to build on this learning.
Lastly, we finished the week off chasing the colours of Autumn. We all set off into the Arboretum and saw reds, yellows, oranges, greens and browns. We enjoyed some tree climbing as well as watching all the colours in the reflection of the water at the boat house.
Little Forest Folk
Winkworth