Kindergarten News

What a busy Autumn term it has been in the Kindergarten. We have been practising our bake off and master chef skills. The children have made so far this term using the fire as our only cooking facility; apple and black berry crumble, porridge, bannock bread, vegetable soup and baked potatoes.

We have welcomed Rob as the third member of our Kindergarten team.  He is an early years qualified teacher and has brought a wealth of experience, and energy to the team. The children enjoy his company and are amazed by his long beard. Rob has got stuck into all areas of forest school life. The children had been enjoying drawing pirate treasure maps. Rob helped develop some wonderful child led play. He made wooden compasses with the children, and led the children on a treasure hunt, he used sticks on the floor as arrows to point the children in the right direction. The children have also been enjoying some super hero role play, Rob helped the children to make our own wooden super hero’s with leaf capes. We enjoyed reading Supertato, and made our very own super spuds.

The children have been busy tidying our pallet planters ready for the spring. We took down our tomato and bean plants. The children dug them over then have planted daffodil bulbs ready for the spring. We also harvested sunflower seeds from the sunflower’s we grew in the summer, ready for planting around April / May time.

The weather has now started to turn. We have seen our first hard frost this week, the children enjoyed breaking up the ice with sticks. They have enjoyed splashing in the muddy puddles that the rain left behind. People often ask us, how do we carry on in the winter? The answer lies with the children. As long as they are dressed appropriately they’re minds still want to explore the new things that arrive with winter. This week we collected the rain drops in as many different guttering pipes and containers as we could. We all sat down around the table together, and drew what we thought the rain looked like, whilst we listened to the pitter patter rain drops on the roof of the tarp. We have really felt the benefit of our cosy classroom and wood burning stove, when we need a bit of time to warm up and shelter from the wind.

Other activities have included;

Making our own charcoal pencils for mark making, painting with conkers, leaf crowns, willow wands, trips the stream where we found a fish. We’ve enjoyed walks to Shillingford organic food farm, to see what vegetables have been growing.

We now look forward to rest of the Christmas season, making lots of Christmas decorations with items we can find in the forest.

Emma Sheffield
Manager, Exeter Forest School Kindergarten