Another wonderful week in the forest with a ton of interest and investigation.

We’ve been focusing on the five senses (touch, taste, hear, smell and see). We used a magic box where the children had to guess what items were hidden inside, which enabled the children to use their sense of touch by feeling different textures and shapes. Initially most of the children’s responses were “I don’t know”, but they soon got the gist of the game and started to find things to hide in the box themselves.

We've been looking at what different textures we can find around the forest. We looked at trees, leaves, grass, mud and even insects. The children expanded on their vocabularies using words such as ‘slimy’, ‘soft’, ‘sticky’, ‘rough’, ‘hard’, ‘cold’, ‘warm’, and ‘hot’.

The children thoroughly enjoyed making their first fruit salad for snack time, cutting up the fruits by themselves and taking turns to use the knife. Using the knife to cut the fruit helped the children develop their sense of awareness and encouraged turn taking.

Cutting up small pieces of fruit like grapes helped children practice their fine motor skills. They tried a variety of fruits including pears, different types of melons, grapes and kiwis. This activity was mainly aimed at tasting. The children found the difference between apples and pears interesting and tried to guess between the two once they were cut up – tricky!

It was amazing to see the children’s faces light up when they saw the massive puddles in our meadow area. There was a lot of splashing (nearly a bit of swimming too!). The children enjoyed pretending the puddles were ponds, rivers, pools of chocolate and coffee for the adults too!

The children built bridges to get across the puddles without “falling into the river”, using their balancing skills.

We found plenty insects using our nets, including worms and slugs, who enjoyed drinking lots of “hot chocolate” and we found cosy homes for them all.

After finding so many worms, snails and slugs in the forest, the children decided they wanted to listen to the book ‘Mad About Mini beasts’. They were keen to count the lady birds’ spots and the centipedes legs, flutter like butterflies and wriggle like worms. After listening to the story, the children chose their favourite mini beasts, the earwig being the most popular - “snip, snip”.

Next week in the Forest

Next week we will be continuing our topic of the five senses. We have activities using blindfolds and playing games such as ‘Guess the Scent’, printing using different textures, making telescopes and trying ingredients that are sweet, sour, salty and bitter!

Reminder to families

Please can you remember to bring a fair amount of spare clothes for when your children get wet. As we are expecting a few more rainy days, we do expect more splashing in muddy puddles.

As you know the children wear their backpacks to the forest, so if you could remember to bring them in with bags that are suitable and comfortable.

We do apply sunscreen on the children but if you prefer to apply your own, please let us know.

Here is a suggested Spring kit list for what your child should wear in the forest:

Comfortable bottoms, i.e. leggings or tracksuit bottoms, not jeans
Long sleeve shirt
Thin jumper
Fleece zip-up or jumper (preferably without a hood to fit under waterproofs)
Socks
Warm wellies
A thin hat for early mornings and a sun hat for sunny days
Labelled rucksack
Labelled water bottle
Labelled spare trousers & socks (more than 1 set of each plus underwear if potty training)

We are getting busy quite quickly so we recommend you label your children’s items as much as you can.

Upcoming calendar events

Monday May 30th: Bank Holiday – LFF CLOSED

Tuesday 31st May - Friday 3rd June: Half Term Holiday Camp.
Read more about our holiday camps and how to book: LFF Holiday camps

Monday 6th – Friday 10th June: Week of Queens
We will be celebrating the Queens birthday with a week of dressing up, tea parties and learning about our royal family history.

Little Forest Folk Chiswick