It’s still a challenge to know how to work with this quick and far-reaching exploring- it’s fast, difficult to film in its sweeps of movement often in and out of sight. We need to be alongside and yet half the children’s desire is for independence, solitariness (though including key friends), distance. I followed once from a way back and when after a deal of running and boundary visiting they came to a stop, I made the classic mistake of asking if they had found the quiet place, to get the friendly but obvious answer “well, if you went a bit further away, this could be the quiet place”!

Other zooming has turned into ‘magic tricks’ – with children positioning an audience of friends/educator, then disappearing in one direction and re-appearing in another. Will start posting about this soon but it is fascinating, playing with the magic shape of circular paths, and taking advantage of the invisible places in the woods. It’s joining up too with another running game and narrative of the wicked witch, the fairies, and the pirates. Brilliant stuff. This is easier to work with in the woods because it has a performance aspect to it, although it began spontaneously and it happens in a particular place. In fact the children say ‘let’s go to the magic trick’. And great to develop, as the teachers are doing back in the classroom through drawing and film.

Generosity and suggestiveness as qualities in the nursery – yes, absolutely a thing to be consciously working with and also separate these from ‘stuff’ – working with simple rich open-ended materials, and a core belief in the worth of children’s own ideas and experiments. It’s beginning, and is certainly growing stronger in this second phase.

I think one of the strengths of the ELiN work is the ‘conversation’ you have been able to build through values, materials, attention, between the woods space and the classroom.

Your word generous reminded me that Helen Thomas, Edward’s widow (and quondam wife), once described the ‘curve of a beech branch’ as resembling ‘a hand opened for giving’, and it seemed to me exemplary of her nature that she could perceive generosity in the form of a tree.

I have been lucky enough to accompany both groups, and so witness the distinctly different ways children have approached the same space in their initial meetings. For some, the exploration has been fast-paced, seeking to ‘lead’ others from area to area at speed. For other children, exploration was slower and more cautious, staying close to a friend or familiar adult. Others sought to investigate places that seemed secret, hidden, or a challenge to access.

As well as these different approaches to exploration, the same places and spaces also seem to be taking on different significance to different groups of children. The same large fallen log has variously been an ‘aeroplane’, ‘horse’, ‘train engine’, ‘canon’ and ‘caterpillar’ during the past few weeks. Similarly, there have been particular spaces revisited time and time again by children in one group, such as the morning children’s ‘underground house’, which has just not attracted the same fascination for children in other groups.

So in one sense, ‘difference’ has been a striking feature for me throughout the exploration so far, yet as we re-visit the woods, patterns also seem to be emerging. Certain groups seem to be returning and connecting with particular places and ideas again and again, and I look forward to teasing out these themes and scaffolding their deeper exploration as the project continues.