We’ve certainly all been enjoying the warmer weather this week, which has even meant jackets-off on various occasions! These atmospheric changes help children to develop their own ideas about body temperature regulation, and their understanding of how different items of clothing help and protect us. We are always very impressed with how children here manage the vast array of fastenings with such dexterity and patience across the very many layers!
This week many of us enjoyed building and playing with dozens of wooden rounds that we discovered on a wonderful walk around the beautiful blooming yellow Gorse and Heather. Here we learnt all about how different properties and shapes affected the stability of building towers. With discussions around size and angles, children soon recognised that the “flat ones” were the good ones for the job. The towers made were perfect for counting and helped with early playful addition, adding one more at a time to make larger towers and recounting with each extra piece.
In other “loose part play” many children enjoyed designing faces on the forest floor surface. First, we brushed away the loose-leaf litter to create a blank canvas. Next, educators modelled making the beginning of a circle by lining up small twigs. Children were helped to label and quantify features and positional language helped everyone to consider where to place representative pieces. With stones, lichen and moss, leaves, and string we all had a lot of fun making faces, especially enjoying making our faces happy or sad with curved twigs. Some children decided to create their own faces whilst some enjoyed designing “scary monsters” with unusual amounts of features like one eye and three noses!
We hope you’ve had a good week so far and get to enjoy a nice family weekend together. See you all soon.
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth