What a fabulous week we have had as we’ve explored the forest. Our theme this week has been farms, where our food comes from and ‘understanding the world around us’.

A fabulously creative educator drew and cut out a large Holstein Cow and filled a disposable glove with watery white paint, to create an udder which hung from the cow’s belly. The children learned about dairy farms and that milk comes from cows and all the yummy things milk can be made into. Tiny pin pricks were added to the tips of the engorged udder (glove) and the children delighted in sitting and gently milking our cow.

We were also blessed by a visit from our local Bee Association, who brought over a perspex sided hive of bees that we could look at and learn about. We could see a queen bee being fed and cleaned by the worker bees who are all female. We learned about pollen, nectar and we played a bee game pretending to be larvae in the honeycomb, some of the children fed the larvae with a special jelly, pollen and nectar.

We have also been making paper this week. With the gloriously hot weather, our sheets of recycled paper have dried out very quickly lying in the sunshine. We learnt that we can make paper by recycling old paper and/or cardboard and turning it into a pulp. Then, by sinking a deckle and frame into a bath of very liquid pulp, we are able to fish and scoop up a single sheet of very wet paper. We turn it out and sponge off the excess water, leave it to dry in the hot sunshine and presto… we've made paper! The wide-eyed wonder and pride of being able to make their own pieces of paper and then take them home is such a rich and valuable learning experience. In the process, the children learnt that paper comes from trees and that recycling more means we can cut down less trees and thus look after our planet.

Thanks for coming to the forest, see you next time.

Little Forest Folk
Twickenham