We’ve started the week with a very experimental tasting experience, as we cropped some of the late blooming black bell peppers, grown in our actual vegetable bed “bed”. Amongst all the other flowers and veg, these were lovingly sown, planted out, and tended to by all of the children over the course of this year. We really look forward to continuing this with everyone throughout all seasons. It was great to see that as these sliced peppers were passed around alongside our typical snack time food, several children took the opportunity to try it. Here, some educators were able to model that they had also never tried it but were excited to, and demonstrated that whilst tasty the flavour was different to the yellow, red, orange and green ones. It’s in an open and friendly log circle time in the great outdoors, with food growing a few feet away from us, where we can all have a lovely chat about our opinions and ideas. By inclusively discussing our tastes and preferences in the round circle we can begin to help children understand different options and the important energy food gives us to play for even longer!
Another way we are helping our little ones understand all about self care, is with our giant set of teeth prop. Children absolutely loved saying hello to it over the course of the week, and many have had a good go at brushing away the “food”. Here for older children we can extend vocabulary around specific teeth and talk of their function whilst discussing everyones great morning and bed time routines. We have found that the characters in a fun books called “Super Potato: Veggies to the rescue” all have exceptionally gleaming white teeth and this has been a great way to help join up thinking about a varied nutritional diet and looking after ourselves.
In the forest this week, sweet chestnut pods have entertained everyone in many different ways. Our friendly squirrels have certainly enjoyed them, and we’ve loved how children have been pulling out the seeds to leave out on logs to help them through the winter. For some the husks make for perfect little “hedgehogs” to build homes for, wash and feed. One morning children arrived to find some land art designed by Dan, using fresh bright green ones, and older brown ones to form alternate diagonal patterns. This is a great way to introduce number sequences by challenging children to consider what they think comes next in a line.
Later in the week a cannonball run through a big postal tube was a huge hit and plenty of fun. Designed with numbers in mind, ideas around cause and effect were scaffolded by educators as children supported each other to lift the tube up to five different heights. Here, we all had turns finding out what made something good at rolling, faster, or better for travelling the furthest distance. This led to nice discoveries about the smaller and larger chestnuts pods, the misshapen stones, or the fact that light sandy earth barely moves down at all.
We all hope have you have plenty of your own discoveries this weekend and we can’t hear about them soon.
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth