Another wonderful week in the forest has flown by, filled with lots of laughter, creativity, collaboration and adventure. We focussed on spelling our days of the week, identifying the local birds and fauna, and danced the day away to celebrate International Dance Day!
Our walks this week have been jam-packed full of learning as we watch the world changing around us. With a handy guide, we managed to identify a variety of flowers, plants and insects including wild garlic, dead nettles and mining bees. The children were fascinated to learn all about every item, keen to match the photos on the guide with what they were seeing with their own eyes and working together to ensure they were identifying it correctly. We also found some funny little green bugs, which we realised were called shield bugs as they are the shape of a shield! Our explorers were fascinated by this little bug and how he blended into the grass. After coming across some fallen sticks, we decided to measure ourselves and found that some of the sticks were even taller than us!
Our explorers used a bug identification sheet to correctly identify a mining bee!
Once again, our natural surroundings doubled as natural materials for us to express our creative side. We found a variety of items to stick onto cards, such as twigs, leaves, feathers and flowers, and then turned our pieces of card into crowns so we could become kings and queens of the forest! Each crown was unique to each explorer, and they enjoyed sharing the power and coming up with games and activities for everyone to participate in! We created our very own dance ribbons by wrapping some string and ribbon around a long stick to celebrate international dance day. We had so much fun running, twirling, jumping and dancing with our ribbons in tow!
We had so much fun dancing along with our ribbon wands!
Our adventurers have such a thirst for knowledge that a few of them asked how to make their own fire. We often discuss how to safely behave around the fire pit before the end of every session and what is needed to build a fire – fuel, oxygen, and a spark! Under the watchful eye of our practitioners, each child took it in turns to create their own spark. It took perseverance, consistency and encouragement, but each child was thrilled when they created their own mini fires! We also enjoyed adding to our ever-growing garden this week by planting some carrots to add to our courgette seeds from last week! The children are really enthusiastic about growing their own plants which have been lovely to see.
Concentration is key when starting a fire!
We hope you all have a wonderful bank holiday weekend, and can’t wait for more fun in the forest next week!
