Our Week in the Forest
What a busy and exciting week our Little Forest Folk-ers have had in the forest!
The children loved exploring our gutter runs, experimenting with height and gaps to create waterfalls. We were lucky to have so much rainwater to collect and we enjoyed figuring out how to catch it all at the bottom so it could be used in the river again! There was lots of experimenting, teamwork and problem solving as they tested how the water flowed.
To help us learn about our emotions and how to communicate them, we used playdough and natural materials to create faces and characters, discussing different emotions and feelings and talking about what might make their characters happy, sad, excited, or worried.
The mud kitchen was full of delicious creations including soups, potions, and muddy cakes, with lots of imaginative role play and mixing.
The children also challenged themselves on our obstacle course using planks, tyres and loose parts, developing balance, coordination and confidence.
One of our favourite activities was making bark boats. The children carefully used a hand drill with support to create a hole for their mast before adding leaf sails. We then sailed them down our gutter rivers, thinking about balance, size and which boats travelled the fastest.
We celebrated World Bee Day and spent the day learning all about bees and why they are so important to our world. The children explored how bees collect pollen and nectar from flowers and help plants to grow.
Our water kitchen was full of flowers and nectar, where the children made wonderful concoctions that would appease any bees! Our little explorers also used pipettes to carefully move ‘pollen’ from one flower to another, just like bees do and even created a gutter run where they transported balls to represent pollen. These activities helped us understand the important role bees play while developing both fine and gross motor skills.
We made beautiful pinecone bees by wrapping yellow and black wool around pinecones and adding wings, developing our fine motor skills and concentration, before flying them around the forest.
Our sensory table was full of ‘honey’ playdough where the children used honeycomb cutters and natural materials to create their own sensory beehives and honeycomb patterns.
We also learnt about how to encourage bees to live in our gardens and green spaces. Using tools safely with support, the children carefully drilled holes into wood to create a bee house for solitary bees.
Did you know bees make wax as well as honey? We explored real beeswax sheets, rolling them and tying them with string to make our own beeswax candles.
A wonderful week full of learning, creativity, and hands-on exploration all about our amazing bees!
Little Forest Folk
Winkworth