After a successful initial Forest Kindergarten Programme which occurred before Christmas we have managed to design and begin our new forest programme. This entails a 6-week course of visits for a small group of children to our local forest within to play and learn. Take a look at what our ‘Lead Forest Practitioner’ Ellie says has been happening over the last few weeks:
“The children have had the opportunity to learn within the local forest environment, where they have been developing a variety of skills from independence and self-help skills through dressing appropriately for different weathers as well as positive social skills as they encourage and support each other to put on puddle suites and welly boots.
Getting to, from and even at the forest the children have been taking on leadership roles and developing risk assessment skills. They have been using the tool of the leader stick, which has allowed the children to make great choices and ensure the safety of the group by carrying out safety assessments and tasks such as, choosing a clear path, ensuring puddles are a safe depth and looking out for signs of danger.
The children have been spending full days at the forest and so are enjoying a picnic lunch in the nursery tent, where the children have shown their understanding of healthy foods and what creates a healthy diet. This continued on to discussions about healthy choices and exercise. As well during our quiet lunch and snack periods we have been identifying the SHANARRI indicators and listening to video stories to help the children learn why each one is important to them and what it means for their rights as a child.
The large gross motor skills development has been fantastic during these visits through the children running, jumping, climbing and balancing and more on various natural obstacles. Their risky and physical play experiences as well have supported the improvement of their problem solving skills as they come across obstacles and hazards where they need to think of new ideas to overcome such obstacles.
In the last few weeks the children have noticed flowers blooming which has sparked a huge interest in the changing seasons changing and children are beginning to learn what differences there are in the environment as the season change, this has been fantastic and interesting science learning happening on our adventures.
The interest of changing season has also helped improve numerical knowledge as the children are identifying colours of the new leaves and plants. Their numerical learning is also evident on the journey to and from the forest as they look for and identify numbers within the environment.
We have had a visit from ‘BookBug’ to the Forrest!”
