We had a great first week in the forest! What a wonderful group of children; these new and old faces coming together to learn and grow and begin a year-long journey together. We are already seeing how we are able to continue some of the interests of the returning students and how the fresh new perspectives and curiosity of our new students will enrich the year.

There were a lot of physical skills practiced this week - hiking over roots, putting on a backpack, testing our footing on different climbing surfaces. Several children were really dedicated to opening the water spout of our mud kitchen / hand-washing water. It was an unexpectedly appealing grip strengthening activity!

New students seem to be developing secure attachments with teachers already. It’s wonderful to see their openness to asking for comfort with us and their willingness to speak up for their preferences during the day - both with us and with each other.

We introduced some new songs to help delineate our forest procedures and they’ve been a hit! Circle time, cleanup time, and other transition times are more reassuring with familiar rhythms and tunes.

We read Children of the Forest over the course of the two days. Several children recreated the story in their play afterwards. We marveled at the many layers of learning in that spontaneous action - literary knowledge, perspective taking, creativity, and more.

Thanks for helping us get off to an inspiring start this year!

—Ashley, Kylie, Sarah, and Shelley