There is not only the forest floor for our Little Forest Folk-ers to explore, this week we have been looking up into the tree canopy on a bird watch. Clipboards and binoculars at the ready, we set off looking for birds. We had some images of local birds that we could tick off when we saw them and we discovered that the most common bird visiting our forest was the gorgeous Robin.
We took our binoculars down to the boathouse in the Arboretum. It was so lovely to hear the gasps as the lake came into view and they could see all the birds. Once they had scanned the lake, they then took their binoculars to the trees to see what they could see.
We continued with our bird theme and set up a Bird Cafe. There were lots of different ingredients for the birds to choose from such as bird seed, pinecones, ferns etc and a lovely menu for our customers to choose from. It was a great chance to practice our fine motor skills as we served up delicious pinecones and seeds onto plates with our serving tongs and set the table. Not forgetting using our math skills to count out the coins and pop them in them in the till. The parrot in the tree was very hungry and luckily our Little Forest Folk-ers were more than willing to send up lots of delicious treats using the bucket and pulley 🦜🪣.
We have also been exploring our zones of regulation in the forest and using the colour monster book to support this. One day, the children could not believe their eyes when they saw the colour monster had visited! Picking up their natural paint brushes made of ferns, moss and pinecones, they added all the different colours for the different emotions. They also had a zones of regulation train track set up where they could move around and stop at the different colours and discuss the different feelings.
There were also different zones set up for all the different colours: there was a pots and pans drum kit for the red zone, an obstacle course with natural resources for the yellow zone, bird watching for the green zone and a nice cosy book corner in the dome tent for the blue zone.
It’s been a wonderful week, we hope you all have a lovely weekend! 🕊️
Little Forest Folk
Winkworth