Our Week in the Forest
This week at Little Forest Folk Winkworth we have been having a great deal of halloween-inspired fun, using it to play and explore fear and other emotions in a super safe environment.
We started the week in fabulous fancy dress. Then we focussed the day on all things witchy! The children had a wide variety of magical ingredients to choose from to count into our cauldron in the witch’s kitchen to make powerful potions, stirring it all up with a big magic stick. Ingredients such as…. eyeballs (made from sweet chestnuts), frog slime and all the shaving foam and forest treasures we could muster! This provided lots of creativity and language exploration as we described the oozy, colourful and smelly potion in all its glory. Of course there was a flying broomstick to climb on top of, as well as the opportunity to make magic wands out of autumn leaves, sticks and string. Naturally, ‘Room on the Broom’ was a popular story that day, and prompted discussion that witches can be both bad or good. Elsewhere, in a calmer corner of the garden, the children made fabulously spooky and colourful houses for witches using a wide variety of magnet tiles… they had just as much fun knocking them over of course!
Tuesday we went potty about pumpkins! Our Little Forest Folk-ers carefully carved a pumpkin with a hand drill, pushing and twisting it to make different shapes and holes. The children then put natural resources in the holes to decorate the pumpkin, pushing stones in for eyes, sticks and leaves for hair and drawing a smiley mouth on it too. Elsewhere, children had the chance to hammer wooden skewers into another pumpkin. These were all fabulous opportunities to strengthen fine motor skills and creativity, the children showed great pride in their collective pumpkin decorating efforts, even if the end result was a mix of comical, cute and mildly terrifying! The insides of the pumpkins were also put to good use. The children chopped it up then mixed it with cinnamon and honey, then roasted it on the fire to make a delicious and aromatic South American afternoon snack - Ayote con Miel.
Wednesday was a bit of a soggy day, but that didn’t dampen our spirits. Instead, we set out on a huge adventure walk in the Arboretum. The children were champion stompers, walking all the way to the lake, enjoying watching the waterfall and making crowns and rings from the ferns we found on route. In the afternoon the children loved hunting for creepy crawlies round the garden. Our Little Forest Folk-ers spent hours digging holes and turning over rocks and logs to see what they could discover. We found worms, centipedes, ants, spiders and slugs. Some of the children loved to pick them up gently and hold them, others preferred looking from a distance, which is perfectly acceptable! They were very curious when they found objects such as an empty shell, wondering what happened to the snail and if it got eaten by a bird. The creepy crawly fun continued in the tuff tray with pretend mini beasts hiding in lots of lovely mucky mud.
Thursday was all about ghosts, with a haunted railway track complete with spooky ghosts (small world figurines covered in white sheets and spooky eyes) that jumped out from behind the bridge any time a train crossed. Our little explorers loved climbing aboard our garden ghost on an A-frame of pallets, and made beautiful spooky stencils of bats, owls, pumpkins, cats and witches with paint and paper. Elsewhere the children continued to make fabulous potions, deciding what magic powers they would give if you dared to (pretend) drink them and continued to find creepy crawlies in the muddy tuff tray as well as in real life in the garden. As an adult led ‘wow’ activity, all the children made their own ghost. First they had to find the right length and sized stick. Then they made a small snip with scissors and tore an old sheet to make the stuffing for its head. Next, a white sheet was placed on top of the stick and stuffing, secured by a piece of string. Lastly the children drew their own eyes and faces on their ghost and proceeded to run around the garden for the rest of the day very much enjoying spooking each other with their creations!
A fabulous week, we hope you all have a good weekend!
Little Forest Folk
Winkworth