It’s been another magical week at Folha Verde, with all sorts of weird and wonderful things going on as usual.
In ‘Jardim’ children made the most of the sun and created a magical miniature garden with leaves, moss, stones and grass found from around the land.
In chestnut they have been learning about rainbows and what makes them happen (taking the opportunity to reinforce our learning of the colours in Portuguese of course), as well as enjoying working with a beautifully illustrated animal puzzle book.
We had a really lovely and diverse mix of offerings happening this week and each day the board we use to plan our days was full of offerings. Annie and Felix visited us to read stories to Folha Verde Jardim and then to play a game about metaphors with some of the older children, which evolved into some of them writing their own poems. It was the most silent we had ever heard it at Folha Verde as children really focussed on the creative process and there was some really beautiful and descriptive use of language as a result.
We also learned about where our food comes from – looking at drawings of different types of food and saying them in English and Portuguese before sticking them into the appropriate section of the board – plants, trees, the earth, and animals.
We had fun being creative around the main table one morning – drawing pictures of each other without looking at what we were drawing, with some amusing and impressive results. At the other end of the table some of us did some needle-felting, using some new wooden templates to make felted wool alpacas, with others making hearts, flowers, toadstools, little hats and balls.
After our talk with the children last week about things we like to do to feel calm, we started the process of making a ‘calm clock’ – a dial with an arrow that can we will spin to select which of the calming activities to try when we need something to help us feel more calm. We also carried out our first morning meeting in whispers this week – encouraging a culture of really listening to each other after a few very noisy meetings recently!
We had a visit from two lovely people Chloe and Dan on Monday, who do clowning workshops and are travelling around looking for somewhere to base themselves. As well as spending some time with the children and talking to us about their plans and the Folha Verde project, they bought a lovely gift for Folha Verde children – a big glockenspiel, a great addition to our little collection of musical instruments. Thank you Chloe and Dan.
We also had a spontaneous visit from two Spanish jugglers on Wednesday afternoon – a really fun way to end our week, with the children joining in the juggling games with balls, battons and bowler hats!
It felt great to have something so magical for the children just happening out of the blue like that. At the same time Tamsin led a session of movement and dance with outside for the younger ones, with a few older ones choosing to join in. What a great end to our week! Thanks to everyone who came to visit us this week – giving their time and energy to add such richness and diversity to what we do at Folha Verde.
