Posted on: September 29th 2021
Last week Norfolk House Nursery had their Forest School trip to Highgate woods in the sunshine - which was lovely (considering the previous week was so rainy!) It was great to enjoy a sunny Autumn day beneath the canopy of the trees. We used our core values of being a thinker, our eyes to look for different animals and spotted two magpies, a squirrel, a black beetle and plenty of dogs! We used our sense of hearing to listen to the beautiful birdsong in the trees - even though we couldn't see the bird itself!
The children had great fun exploring the wooden log den, which they made into the house of the pigs (guess who ended up being the big bad wolf?) Poor Ms King had to huff and puff to the squeal of the little piggies giggling as they barricaded the door and lit the big fire beneath the chimney! Some children enjoyed trying to balance along the big fallen tree trunk; some enjoyed digging for worms whilst others made their own house collage using soil as the canvas and sticks for the lines. We finished off our time by finding sticks to use as claves and sang our “tap your sticks” song. Going to the woods is such an enrichment for the children and plays an important part in their development.
“through...play outdoors children have real, direct experience of the natural world. They learn in nature not just about nature.”
(Froebel in Lilley 1967:148).
