Our Week in the Forest
This week at Little Forest Folk Winkworth we have been exploring lots of different topics from vets to pirates, butterflies and space, showing just how versatile and varied forest life can be!
On Monday the children became vets for the day, tending to sick and injured animals. They practiced their bandaging skills, taking temperatures and weight measurements and talked about how to look after the animals kindly. We had our skilled receptionists on hand to take calls from owners and book appointments. Our Little Forest Folk-ers thought carefully about which animals might need their help, from their cats and dogs at home to their animal friends on farms or in the wild.
In the mud kitchen, we made use of all the rain water we’d collected and used this to make a selection of mud pies and mud cakes. The children loved watching how the water runs through colanders and also practiced how they can effectively transfer water from one side of camp to another. We also enjoyed some small car and truck racing, exploring how fast the cars could go, this stimulated rich conversation about where the trucks might be going and what they could be delivering.
On Tuesday, we sailed the seven seas with a very hardy crew of pirates! Aboard the pirate ship, made from pallets complete with a Jolly Roger flag and a plank, our pirates planned where they wanted to go, steered the ship and climbed the rigging, all whilst battling the rain! When they found themselves on a remote island our Little Forest Folk-ers followed their maps to a spooky cave, did lots of digging to find the hidden treasure and hid some new treasure of their own! An old net bag for doing the washing became a fishing net and subsequently an anchor, filled with a heavy stone, showing what rich imaginative play goes on here, whatever the weather. We particularly love to see when real-life, every day objects become magically transformed through play. The children then got crafty and made and decorated their own egg box pirate ships and sang along with an old favourite ‘When I was one, as big as your thumb, the day I went to sea!’
Continuing our time on the water, our little adventurers experimented with pouring water down different drain pipes and sailed their own small boats down them between two tuff trays. There were even a few ducks floating around and along them too. The children talked about what would happen if they tilted the drain pipes and what objects would and wouldn’t float, including the egg box boats they had made themselves.
On Wednesday, our little explorers started their day as hungry little caterpillars about to make their cocoon, before becoming beautiful butterflies. They had lots of fun playing dress up, hopping over logs and flying through the plants and the trees, then deciding to make a tree house to live in and have tea in with their butterfly friends!
The children then used their investigative skills with magnifying glasses and binoculars to find hidden butterflies and other insects amongst the forest leaves, talking about which bugs they found, which ones were bigger/smaller, and which could fly. They then got creative and decorated their own butterfly creations. In the book corner they explored insect related tales with ‘The Big Book of Bugs’, ‘What the Ladybird Heard Next’ and ‘Animal Homes’.
On Thursday, it was another rainy day, but that didn’t matter as we zoom, zoom, zoomed off to space! The children had a great deal of fun with our special moon dust sensory tray, complete with astronauts, rockets and satellites. They experimented with the moon dust to make patterns then filled foil balls with it to make meteors which then fell from the sky and exploded into dust when they hit the planet’s surface. Magnet tiles were transformed into impressive, colourful rocket towers, complete with fire boosters, only to be knocked down and rebuilt repeatedly, as it should be! Of course we also enjoyed singing ‘Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, We’re Going to the Moon’, as well as several rounds of ‘Simon Says’ and ‘Mr Clickety Cane’ for good measure!
That’s it for this week’s newsletter and whilst we can hope for slightly less soggy weather next week, if it does rain, be assured, we will certainly not let that stop any of the learning or fun!
Little Forest Folk
Winkworth