Autumn introductions
A new term with Wild Learning for Building Blocks on Wimbledon Common starts with exploring in the lovely autumn sunshine.
We had a lot of newcomers as this is the start of term, to both the nursery and the forest, we stayed for a little while on the meadow, telling our names and going through the most important safety rules (Tinka walks in front of the children to check the path is safe from dogs, horses and Gruffalo, we run on the grass and walk on the path with stones, and we do a doggie-cuddle when an adult says ‘dog!’.)
We took the children on the Heather path to play ‘One-two-three where are you?’ amongst heather, which they loved and wanted to do it 4 times. On our way we looked at the plants we shouldn’t touch – stinging nettle and blackberry / bramble.
When we reached Dragon Hill (several children enjoyed running up the hill, others found it challenging enough to climb up walking) I told the children a brief version of the story of an old friendly dragon sleeping under the hill.
They had fun laying down with one ear on the ground, listening to dragon snoring.
We played the game of nature treasure (sensory) bag; children were putting their hands (one at a time) in my bag, pulling out little ‘nature things’ such as an acorn, a pine cone, a rosehip, a conker, a feather, a leaf…placing them in the middle of the circle where everyone could see it and name it.
We chatted about what plants can we see growing around us how we can tell that Autumn is coming – the leaves are starting to change their colour from green into yellow or red, etc. On our way we spotted a butterfly and a crow, and we played a game of guessing what other animals live around in the forest, then we’d all turned into a suggested animal and waddled like a duck, flapped our arms like a bird, jumped like a frog, walked on all four like a fox, etc.
Some of the group asked if they could climb a tree, so we had a little tree-horse ride on a big low growing branch on one of the big oaks at the bottom of Dragon Hill meadow. While 4-5 children at a time were tree riding, the rest of them busied themselves with cooking in the hole in the ground, mixing twigs, leaves and earth with a stick – which shows that kids can always find an interesting thing to do in nature.
We returned back to the minibus the short way through the forest and practiced walking down the steep path with pebbles on.
The children were a very friendly and fun bunch – and it seemed they were all enjoying being out in nature.
We’re looking forward to our new adventures on Wimbledon Common!
