Our Week in the Forest...
Our week began in Kew with a trip to the new Conservatory that has recently opened. It was an adventurous walk across the park where we collected sticks along the way, stopped to say hello to the Dragon statues and played hide and seek amongst the bushes. As we approached the Temperate House we noticed how big and grand the new building was. Once inside, the children were intrigued by the different sizes of plants and flowers that they could see. They were having a great time spotting the different coloured flowers and discussing what they smelt like. The Conservatory taught us all about the different plants that come from hot places around the world. Our educator Amie and one of the children were very excited to see an area dedicated to their home Country of New Zealand, with lots Ferns and Punga trees growing which are native to New Zealand. The children noticed a walkway high above all the trees and plants and decided that it would be a great idea to head up. The view was superb and all the visitors in Kew were very impressed with our excellent climbing skills too.
Carrying on from our Conservatory visit at Kew, we headed back into the Forest in Chiswick this week, arms loaded with lots of seeds ready to plant in our allotment. Karina and Rachel took some children in the afternoon to start the process of preparing the ground and planting the seeds ready to grow over the summer. We had a fantastic range of yummy vegetable seeds including purple sprouting broccoli, peas, cabbage, and kale. All the children were great in helping dig the holes, covering the seeds with soil and watering them. We can’t wait to continue our visits to the allotment as we will be planting more seeds over the coming weeks including sweet corn, beetroot, carrot, lettuce and tomatoes. Hopefully we will be enjoying a picnic lunch towards to the end of the summer filled with all things grown by us!
The children have enjoyed painting in the forest this week after the success of our stone painting last week. We gathered lots of sticks and pine cones for them to have a go at decorating this time. Some children were very specific with their one colour choice while others were fascinated by their ability to mix the paint brushes into the different colours and create a new colour all on their own. On Wednesday afternoon, we took the stones we painted last week and ventured on a walk to place the coloured stones in different areas all around Chiswick Gardens ready for other people to find (like we had found the week before). This turned into a bit of a treasure hunt as the children used the stones to create a trail that led us to our old base camp. We had so much fun dropping the stones behind us and on our return, we collected the stones up one by one until we were back at our new camp! We have hidden the stones in a secret place ready to use again next week.
The children have been busy this week using their imaginations to create some lovely shared experiences with new and old friends. There has been an abundance of group play amongst the children with the older ones encouraging the younger children to join in with their role play games with so much excitement surrounding their play. Lots of children have been using the forest as a home which they sweep every day, build rooms for friends and with help from Otis, they have been planning a big house for everyone to play in. They have been building tiny models of the house and developing ideas for the roof and walls. We can’t wait to see the progress next week!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick