Our Week in the Forest...
This week we started off in the lovely Kew Gardens where the sun was still shining accompanied with a slight breeze. We scanned the map for what we could do, and all the children agreed on the Treetop walkway. On our way, we enjoyed seeing the new flowers in bloom and also encountered lots of groundskeepers out pruning all the trees. All of the children were very keen to say hello to all the workers at Kew which we hope brought a smile to their face.
We arrived at the tree top walk ready to put on our strong legs and march all the way up to the very top. None of us feared how high it was (except for some of the educators!). Along the way there were lots of signs full of interesting facts all about trees. A lot of the children were recognising letters from their own names in some of the words. We were all very busy searching for how many letters we could find, whilst others were busy spotting birds nests and watching people walking below.
Whilst at Kew, we had a great opportunity to recreate some masterpieces using our sticky paper. We enjoyed it so much last week that the children insisted on taking the resources to Kew for us to collect lots of interesting pieces for our pictures. Some of the children were experimenting with heavy pieces of bark and others were creating lots of smaller pictures using daisies and grass.
We had lots of fun this week back at Chiswick House and Gardens. We started most of our days on long walks into the forest, where we came across a great place full of giant leaves that had fallen. All the children gathered up as many as they could carry back to camp and this started off our wonderful week of leaf craft! The children used the giant leaves to race as boats in the pond, we poked holes in some of them and practised our threading in and out using string. We even used the leaves to create some colourful leaf rubbing pictures, which gave the children a go at writing the first letter of their name on their drawings so we could identify them at the end of the day.
The leaf collecting was so popular that we went back the following day to see if we could find any more. This time the children were put to the task of collecting 10 each! We had great success with some excellent counting skills. By the end of the week most of the children’s bags were full to the brim of leaves and sticks. The forest was also full of the sound of music this week, thanks to Avalon who has come to help us in the forest. She has been engaging the children in song which has spread to full live musical performances most days with children playing different ‘stick instruments’ from flutes, to guitars, to the drums.
Painting has been a highlight this week with the children enjoying painting sticks and leaves. We have been busy learning about what colours mix together to create new colours. The children used their own ‘leaf palette’ to mix the two colours of their choice. We have made the forest a very colourful place this week by hanging all our artwork up to dry.
Little Forest Folk
Chiswick