Forest Grove Hackney

It was wonderful to witness the children’s enthusiasm for the barefoot trail. The children collaborated beautifully, working together to create a border of branches, while the pathway itself was filled with an array of contrasting textures: sand, leaves, soil, sticks, stones, and pine cones, creating a thrilling sensory adventure. They sorted through the materials and discussed their decisions, working really nicely together.

After crafting a trail that stretched a few metres, complete with squelchy mud, smooth cool sand, and scattered pinecones and stones, everyone eagerly removed their boots to experience it. While some materials felt wonderfully pleasant, others were found to be a bit uncomfortable or less enjoyable. This experience brought them so much joy and proved to be immensely popular.

As they traversed the different surfaces, some children happily shared their thoughts about each sensation beneath their feet. Upon stepping onto the trail, many exclaimed, “cold!” When they encountered the sand, several described it as “soft,” while noting that “the mud is wet,” and the sticks and stones were “hard and cold.”

The children relished the barefoot path, returning to it multiple times and joyfully expressing their thoughts with each visit, continually exploring and allowing their bodies to connect with the diverse textures underfoot.

Children thrive when learning through their senses. This form of sensory learning not only makes the experience more memorable but also enhances communication and language skills, helping them to articulate their feelings and link them to the words that describe those sensations.

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Happy 100th birthday

It was truly a privilege to celebrate you today! We organised a small party, created some bunting, sang happy birthday and indulged in Nettle Energy Balls!

Have a great day!
From 💚❤️💚

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Cleavers, cleavers, cleavers! Or sticky w**d! 🌱🌱🌱

A little late with this posting… last week we discovered plenty of fun activities with the sticky w**d!

🌱 Hapa Zome art: The children had a wonderful time leaf bashing with small wooden balls, creating stunning prints from cleavers and various leaves on fabric. Their collaboration on the wood stumps and logs added a lovely rhythm to our forest time, and the results were truly impressive!

🌱 Sticky w**d juice: Armed with hazel sticks, the children pounded the cleavers to fill their jugs with dark green juice. It was a delightfully messy activity that provided their little hands with a good workout! We were amazed at how long it took to produce just a cupful of juice.

Next, we mixed the cleaver juice with water and a splash of apple juice. As the day came to a close, we cherished our healthy spring tonic made from the plants around us 🌱🌱💚


**d 🌱🌱🌱

As the Spring term draws to a close, so does our exploration of the topic ‘Birds’.
To assess our retention of the information we had gathered about our Birds of the Week, we engaged in a recap activity: we organised our life-sized cardboard birds from the smallest to the largest and then labelled them accordingly. Following this, we matched the eggs to their respective birds.

Reflecting on birds, nests, and eggs also brought to mind the current season and the upcoming Easter celebrations. The children enthusiastically shared their personal traditions, leading to discussions about various spring celebrations and forthcoming holidays. This conversation swiftly transitioned from chocolate eggs to wooden ones, with each child given the opportunity to decorate a wooden egg for their Easter celebrations at home.

Wishing you all a joyful holiday!

I love doing Maths outdoors! This week we combined learning about Bluetits with Maths!

Did you know that a Bluetit typically lays about 8-10 eggs, but sometimes up to 16? Once those little chicks hatch, the parent Bluetits have to find around ONE HUNDRED caterpillars a day for each chick! That’s a lot of caterpillars! 🐛 🐛🐛

100 caterpillars for each chick per day!!

To see if we could collectively find that many, we transformed into little Bluetits ourselves! We used our thumbs and forefingers to act as beaks and carefully picked up green pieces of fabric that represented our caterpillars. Then came the fun part – counting them!

We set up a number line from 1 to 10 and matched one caterpillar to each number, repeating this ten times to reach that magical ONE HUNDRED. Just imagine, that’s just to feed one little chick! We truly are in awe of what a Bluetit parent can do!

We also created some nesting material balls for our bluetits, twisting willow into circles and tying a couple together into spheres, then filling them with small twigs, moss, fluffy Old Man’s Beard and some downy feathers. We even added some strands of carded wool!

We hung them in trees around the nest box; now we’re curious to see whether our bluetits will come and help themselves to some for their own nests!

This week’s ‘tree of the week’, the Elder, a favourite Forest School tree for all its special gifts: the flowers in the spring; the berries in the autumn, and the wonderful wood to craft with due to its soft pith.

After sawing some pieces of elder we went back to our log circle to light a fire to make dyes for some colourful elder beads. The children explored the spices we were going to use, some appreciating the smells of turmeric, chilli powder, and coffee, others less impressed. They emptied the spices into three pots and mixed them up with some water, then we waited patiently. Some children stayed around the fire all morning, making more elder beads to add to the dyes, threading them for necklaces, exploring the tree props, or simply enjoying the fire.

We were most impressed with the colour of our beads once they came out of their pots after about 40 minutes, especially the turmeric gave the beads a really bright colour! It would have been a shame to tip out the dyes so we poured them into jars and used them for painting.

It was a particularly crafty day painting, making elder beads by pushing the soft pith out with sticks and palm drills, peeling or whittling the bark off, dyeing and threading the elder beads.

After the rain comes sunshine ☀️

The huge puddles left by days of rain were too tempting, and there was plenty of splashing and jumping. A perfect roaming day!

As we celebrate the return of the light during the winter solstice, we made some tiny candles inside walnut shells: the children used a nutcracker to open up the nuts (eat the nuts and keep the shells), then helped build and light a fire. We slowly melted beeswax in a pot over the fire, dipped cotton string for a wick into it, then poured the wax into our walnut shells. Please remember to float your little candles in a small bowl of water; the nut’s shell can easily catch fire.

We also experimented with Japanese knotw**d; the hollow stems seemed ideal for pouring hot wax into and shaping a long candle, the casing of which the children simply peeled off once the wax had set.

After lunch, we made another fire, this time to make some warm treats to mark the end of term. As the end of the day came we shared some hot chocolate and caramelised cinnamon apple slices and sang our solstice song a few more times: A Long, Long Night.

We wish all of you a wonderful restful and festive season, a happy Yuletide celebrating the return of the sun after the long winter dark, a period of feasting, gift-giving, and renewal, and a time to relax and share some special moments by candlelight.


❄️

Making charcoal pencils ✏️

Our resources:
🌱Some freshly cut willow sticks
▪️a tin box
🔨Hammer and nail to make holes in tin lid
🪛palm drill to remove elder pith
🔥A small fire
🛠️Whittling knife to sharpen pencils
🤍Paper for drawing

On this beautiful sunny morning, we read a story about a ‘Beautiful Blackbird’ sharing a bit of its black colour amongst all the other birds, we set out to make our own ‘black’: charcoal!

We built and lit a small fire. Everyone got to stack the kindling and add birch twigs and bark. Whilst the fire burnt, we cut willow into short lengths using secateurs, prepared a tin by hammering holes into the lid, and then sat our tin on the fire, watching for white steam to pour out of the holes as the green wood inside slowly turned to charcoal. In the meantime, the children prepared their pencil holders, using palm drills to push the soft pith out of elder sticks, ready to hold the charcoal lead later.

Once the charcoal willow had cooled we were able to push it through the hollow elderstick pencil holders. The children were able to use their pencils to make some beautiful charcoal drawings of the Blackbird, our Bird of the week!

What a beautiful day!