Our Week in the Forest
What a wonderfully busy and imaginative week we have had in the forest! The children have enjoyed a wide range of sensory experiences, creative projects, literacy activities and adventurous role play throughout the week.
This week, the children explored a sensory tuff tray filled with oobleck. We mixed water and cornflour together to create a magical mixture and added blue and yellow paint, discovering that the colours mixed together to make green. The children loved squeezing, pinching and scraping the oobleck from the tray while exploring the unusual texture through sensory play.
We also enjoyed lots of literacy opportunities with the educators. The children practised recognising the sounds in their names and the names of people important to them. Some children began by writing names in the mud before using sticks to map out the letter patterns. We also explored letter recognition by searching through lots of different letters and identifying those found in our own names, siblings’ names and parents’ names. Some of the older children enjoyed practising their writing with markers, while others sounded out their names phonetically.
Alongside our literacy learning the children worked together on a new camp project by creating signposts for the forest. They painted pallets ready to display the alphabet, numbers, forest rules and daily routines. This encouraged lots of discussion about the rules we follow in the forest as well as opportunities to reflect on letters and numbers we recognise.
Creative and imaginative play has continued to flourish this week. In an activity with Claudia the children used loose parts to build a boat by threading rope through the tarp and carefully hoisting a sail into the trees. This quickly inspired exciting adventures across the forest as the children escaped from dragons and T-Rexes while sailing the seas. Later in the week the children used similar teamwork and problem-solving skills to build a jail in camp. They used poles and ropes to hoist parachutes between trees and then enjoyed imaginative games using walkie talkies to communicate and catch the “bad guys”.
Later in the week, the children enjoyed a voting and tallying activity - they practised recording tally marks while voting for favourites such as Teddy or Piggy, green or orange and even our favourite forest rules. Our little adventurers learnt what happens when we reach five tally marks and proudly took part in voting for the “Forest Mayor”. Teddy won the election thanks to what many children described as Teddy’s “pretty eyes!"
Elsewhere in the forest, some children chose to take part in map making - drawing landmarks and creating maps to guide their adventures across “The Seven Seas” in the meadow after lunch. Others explored bubble mark making, where they used descriptive language to compare bubble sizes, experiment with colour mixing and create wonderfully sudsy mixtures.
Our meadow adventures continued into the afternoon as the children transformed pirate ships into exciting journeys in search of treasure. Along the way they invented new species of animals and discussed whether they were nocturnal or diurnal. The children also explored moon sand, drawing patterns and beginning to form letters while enjoying the calming sensory texture.
We finished the week with some lovely imaginative baking inspired by a story about a family making cakes together. The children collected petals, pine cones, mud and water before mixing their ingredients together in a large pan using sticks and brushes. Once the mixture was ready they carefully transferred it into cupcake trays to “bake” cakes for their friends as a kind gesture to thank them for their friendship.
Finally, a reminder that Emma the photographer will be visiting on Monday 11th May and Wednesday 13th May. Please ensure you have registered on her website if you would like your child to take part.
Thank you for another fantastic week in the forest!
