Our Week in the Forest...
This week we have enjoyed the weather of all seasons, from warm spring sunshine to polar blasts and freezing rain which created amazing puddles to splash in, collect water from and of course to create pies and cakes.
The mud kitchen, as always, has been very popular this week with all manner of culinary delights being mixed, cooked, baked and fried. One day the regular mud café play was extended by a group of children who decided that they were going to plan and build a hotel. Once they had agreed upon having an amazing hotel where children could play, sleep and go swimming, they went off to collect loose parts to create their vision, sharing their ideas and negotiating where each part would go. It didn’t just stop at building a hotel, there was also a train to take you there. The driver was very helpful and explained how to reach their holiday destination from the station and gave us all some tips for when we arrived there!
The children have also enjoyed our adventure walks this week, observing the dramatic changes taking place throughout the Palace and particularly in the walled garden. They have visited the beehives, went in search of water, and taken some envelopes to collect a variety of fallen leaves, flowers, sticks and stones. On one of the adventure walks, the children decided to take the buckets so that they could collect larger objects, and to their amazement they found a baby ‘dinosaur’ skull in amongst the plant pots. They excitedly brought the skull back to basecamp and the children inspected the skull carefully noticing the teeth and eye sockets. One of the educators suggested that it might be the skull of a squirrel but the children explained it couldn’t be as squirrels are alive, it had to be a baby dinosaur because all the dinosaurs had died…
We have also been rediscovering the forest school tools this week and discussing with the children what they would like to make over the next term. There were lots of ideas that involved connecting pieces of wood to construct model cars, to building a treehouse with a bunkbed. It is amazing to observe how incredibly confident and respectful the children are when using the tools, even though we haven’t been using them for a while. Over the coming weeks we aim to introduce a few new tools to open up further possibilities for their natural creations.
We hope everyone has a lovely weekend and we cannot wait to see what Easter camp brings!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham