Our Week in the Forest...
In the forest this week, the children have been busy engaging in a range of activities. We had a fabulous obstacle course created by Rachel which would give any army training course a run for its money. The children braved new heights as they climbed up the 45-degree rope course before swinging their legs over the top and climbing back down the other side, a terrifying and exhilarating experience at the same time.
The children also enjoyed some tool work with Otis this week, they used potato peelers to peel the skin off some elder branches, leading them to explore the texture of the wood below. This led to some fascinating conversations about the children's own home experiences. They told us how they peeled potatoes, carrots and even apples to make an apple crumble! We also talked about the blades on the peelers and named some other tools we could think of that had blades. There was a lot of talk about using tools safely and why we needed to wear gloves. The children were fascinated by the elder and questioned why some of them felt 'wet' whilst others felt 'dry'. We explored how they had gotten 'wet' and the children thought it was to do with the rain, so we discussed how plants get water from the ground and how it travelled up through the roots into the stem of the plant. This helped the children to observe which pieces had been freshly picked and which ones had been on the ground for a while.
We also had some spheres of ice in the forest this week and during the morning we watched them slowly melting until we decided to speed up the process, dropping and smashing some large logs onto the ice to see what happened. It was very satisfying to see them break apart into hundreds of tiny pieces and see the crushed ice that was left behind, like crystals.
We also had some fun painting, using only the three primary colours and white to make orange, green, pink, light blue and brown. We also had some accidental discoveries making turquoise and a light yellow which we thought could be called 'honey' or 'nectar'. The best discovery was mixing orange and pink to make a beautiful pinkie-orange colour that we named 'coral'. A great opportunity to explore, experiment and be creative!
Some string, pegs and numbers led to some number fun this week. We took turns to hide the numbers, find them and peg them back on the line. This led to some fabulous discussions about the order of the numbers from 1-9, one more and one less from a named number and counting the pegs to find where each number belonged. This allowed us to see which number was missing and there was lots of shouting to our friends 'where is number three?'. A lot of fun and learning this week!
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick