The last of our new additions to the team for a while joined us this week. The lovely Jenny has a background as a nursery practitioner and believes very strongly in the importance of exploration and outdoor play in the early years. She's had a great first week and has some little admirers already.
This week we've had lots of fun playing with buses. The children very creatively used logs, tyres, letter and number tiles as well as shorter branches to make their very own bus. It was a gorgeous creation and became a real focus for play during the whole week. We had ticket inspectors selling tickets for the bus, various drivers taking the wheel to drive us to many exotic (and some not so exotic - waitrose anyone?) locations. There was lots of collaborative play and lots of lovely conversations about where we can travel to on buses in addition to many rounds of 'the wheels on the bus'.
It's also been a week for messy creative play with experiments with mixing colours in paints and the creation of a fabulous hand print poster, in addition to lots of our usual digging in the mud and sensory mud squelching and playing.
We've also been busy building dens. The children have loved having little shelters to explore and hide in - it's encouraged more exploratory play and even more interest in ropes, knots and the mathematics behind building structures.
Finally our cooking lesson of the week furthered the children's ability to use tools, transferring their knowledge of safe tool use from the forest into using kitchen equipment to safely prepare a meal. They made pastry tarts, then impressively skillfully chopped beetroot and cucumber to make a chopped salad and finished off with a fruit cobbler. It's so satisfying to see them working together as a team and enjoying their food preparation so much but also lovely to see them all sitting down together and heartily tucking into the fruits of their labour.
Learn more about the benefits of outdoor play
Half term - Holiday camps availability
For anyone looking to join in with some last minute bookings for holiday camps, we've had a couple of cancellations for some days so if you'd be interested in booking in for Monday, Wednesday or Thursday, please let us know.
For Monday bookings please contact Leanna on info@littleforestfolk.com
For Wednesday or Thursday contact Lisa on