Hedgehogs set off for the woods together on a beautiful bright morning. On the walk to the woods the children spoke about what plants they had observed, such as buttercups and blue coloured speedwell. They compared the heights of the stinging nettles, bracken and cow parsley as they passed by. We talked about the importance of not picking any plants that we are unfamiliar with and the reasons why;
“The bees need them for nectar”
“We mustn’t stop the plans growing, they help us to breathe”
“Things might prickle or sting us”
This week the children had a go at ‘leaf wapping’; printing with leaves and flowers. They collected different leaves and flowers in the woodland and learned to identify them by their shapes. They found buttercups, speedwell and bluebells. They took hammers and fabric and folded the flowers into the fabric and hit the sap and juice out of them with hammers, creating symmetrical patterns on the fabric.
The class all found 2 sticks, tapped out patterns and sang a song together. We played a game of ‘1,2,3 change tree’ where the children had to run to find a new tree to be safe at before the end of a countdown. There was lots of time for independent play this week, with the children balancing on the slack line, swinging on the hammock, digging in the mud, creating mud mixtures and paint and exploring the woodland in spring.
At the end of the session the class managed to pass 2 ‘woodland whispers’ all the way along the line of them, listening brilliantly to each other. They also shared some of the things they had enjoyed about their session. Well done Hedgehogs, it was great to see the children engaging so well with developing their physical risk and challenge when exploring the woodland. A huge thank you to the parent volunteers who came and supported the children so brilliantly and got involved in all of their play.
