Our Week in the Forest...
Water, water, everywhere… what a fun week it’s been in the forest and our children have seemed to enjoy sticking to water based activities each day this week. Maybe an extra hot bank holiday weekend got the children thinking about water and keeping cool. Or perhaps, as is often the case, one child provides an idea and the other children love to reuse, reshape and redevelop it in many different forms throughout the week.
The discovery of an old piece of guttering provided what seemed like hours of entertainment. The children loved filling their buckets, pouring the water down the guttering and shrieking with delight to see it splash at the bottom. It didn’t take very long before someone realised we would work our way through the water very quickly by doing this, so a bucket was placed at the bottom of the guttering so that we could reuse the water, ensuring the activity lasted much longer. It was a joy to see all the mathematical concepts being used; “Lift it higher to make the water go faster”, “I’m going to fill my bucket all the way to the top”, “Let’s throw our water up the pipe to see what happens”. This real-life experimentation is such an important aspect of how the children begin to make links between cause and effect and help them consolidate their mathematical understanding.
On our walk in and out of the forest, the children discovered a fallen down pillar which soon became a fire engine. The children would sit on it and talk about where they were going, who they were going to save and of course, the most exciting bit, about all the water they were going to spray out. The best part about being a child would seem to be how anything can be anything. When this pillar had stopped being a fire engine, the children’s amazing imagination had turned it into a pirate speed boat. Now instead of driving over roads, the children were sailing across stormy seas, looking at all sorts of amazing sea creatures beneath.
On our most rainy day during lunch, when we were sat under our tarp listening to the sound of the rain, talking about how it feels and what it looks like, not only were the children developing their communication skills and literacy skills, but they were working on their creativity. This was evident when one child used his cucumber and carrot stick to make a mini umbrella. Before long all the children were comically doing their best to shelter under a carrot and cucumber umbrella (if you’ve never seen an umbrella made from carrot and cucumber it’s worth checking out!)
Our water themed week had all the usual activities and children continue to play on Simon’s evermore extravagant spider’s webs, the swings, with the mud kitchen or the story books. Our last week of holiday camp has meant our first week of new September children settling. Our regulars have made our new children feel extremely welcome and this week has been an exciting taste of what is to come…
Have a lovely weekend!
Little Forest Folk