This week on our Forest School sessions, we have been on long walks around the farm, visiting all the animals. We’ve been focussing our ability to manage our own risks, carefully walking around the farm yard on the uneven ground without falling over, steadily walking up the steps to the office to visit Bobby bird and navigating around the kissing gate on the way to visit the chickens.
On our walk around the farm we have been developing our communication and language when talking and recognising noises the animals make as well as the colours of the animals. Some of the children were able to name the animals, whereas other children could distinguish the animals by making the noises themselves. During our numerous walks around the farm we have been singing songs linking the animals we spotted on our trips; “Chick Chick, Chick Chick, Chicken! Lay a little egg for me!” and “Horsey Horsey, don’t you stop.”
Our story of the month for August is called Noisy Farm. This book talks about the animals you find on the farm and describes them and what they like doing. The story is linked to our Forest School activity and continues to develop our communication and language skills. It also endeavours to display the children’s knowledge and understanding by linking the two activities together.
During the month of August, we are also looking at songs that are animal related, developing our communication, language and physical development, thus encouraging the children to join in with the actions of the songs that we sing on a daily basis. At ‘Circle Time’ we take it in turns to pull a song card out of the bag. We learn to take turns and sit in a group, which has a knock on effect in developing our personal, social and emotional development, as well as developing our fine motor skills by pulling the card out of the bag as this can be quite tricky at times!
Louise