Our Week in the Forest
This week brought some cold winter winds with it and a whole lot of excitement for the changing season. Is that Christmas we hear around the corner? The children certainly think so!
We started off the week exploring the magic of shapes in the forest. The children spotted shapes in the natural environment and discussed which they liked the best. We kept warm exploring the different shapes of our obstacle course and then spent a cosy early evening making some lovely circle and star shaped Christmas tree ornaments for our nursery Christmas tree.
On Tuesday our forest was full of our favourite vehicles for the children to explore and discuss. They set sail on their ship, rocketed off to space in our cardboard box rocket, navigated the sprawling pencil roads in their motor cars and checked into their flights at the forest airport. This sparked lots of great conversations about what we each prefer and why!
Wednesday was a snow day and we raced out into the Arboretum for a snowy adventure. The first point of consideration was to see if the snow had settled on the branches of the trees. Our Little Forest Folk-ers exclaimed about how pretty it was. They also looked for animal tracks in the snow but there was none to be seen. So we of course had no choice but to make some tracks for ourselves! We even tried to make a snowman and experimented with rolling the snow up into balls. We can’t wait for more Winkworth snow adventures this winter!
At the end of the week we hit sub-zero temperatures and celebrated with a lovely cosy fire circle. The children were experts at cold weather protocols, teaching each other how to stamp their feet and rub their hands to keep warm and helping each other with their hats and gloves. We made our most strenuous obstacle course yet, ending in a pallet mountain. Our little explorers stopped for warm milk by the fire, stomped around as dinosaurs and then heated their soup for lunch over the fire too. We then spent a mindful afternoon decorating our trees and circle logs with coloured chalk. The rainbow dust chalk brought magical healing power to our forest, leaving us all tingly and supercharged for play. Winter at Winkworth certainly is magical!
Little Forest Folk
Winkworth