Our Week in the Forest
We have had a glorious week of exploring the forest through our senses and extending our vocabulary. Sticky, orange, ooblek with its combined dribblyness and stiff qualities, perplexed and excited our curious minds. We also enjoyed tweezer work with natural elements like smooth conkers, rough pine cones, small, hard, ash keys, small greenish acorns and soft feathery grasses. As our autumn leaves have been changing colour and falling to our forest floor, we have enjoyed feeling their textures. Some are large and papery thin, others are crispy and crunchy having fallen from the trees a few days ago. We have enjoyed reconditioning some old, dry, clay and squishing the soaked clay between our fingers until our hands were completely covered and grey. Sand has also been present as the younger children have explored the fine grains and cool qualities. Our vocabulary has been enhanced and extended through our play and exploration.
We had a great day practising our hammering skills in the forest this week. Holding the nail carefully with our fingers and thumb, we hit the nail with our lovely, small, hammers. This was a challenge for some of the younger children, so a fork was brought into play as the tines of the fork helped to hold the nail up right, our fingers and thumbs held the fork handle, thus keeping our digits safe. Once we’d knocked in a few nails we then used brightly coloured, soft, fluffy, wool to wrap around the nails and create a pretty pattern.
Our favourite books this week have been 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle and 'Baby Owls' by Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson. Our Little Forest Folk-ers have created obstacle courses shaped like caterpillars, cardboard toilet rolls have been painted to create a plethora of caterpillars, our mud kitchen became a food preparation area for caterpillars including all the fruit and cakes that our very hungry caterpillar ate. The Baby Owls story was role played out in our barn as small children slept and then woke to wonder where mummy was? There was a lot of ‘tucking children in’ and soothing upset ‘baby owls’ as they waited for their “mother to fly back to the barn.”
Thanks for coming to the forest, see you again next time.!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham