This week was a super short week! By which we mean that it was a short week, thanks to our Monday bank holiday, but also a super week! ✨
On Tuesday, still feeling in the weekend mood, we had a café-style mud kitchen! ☕ It was perfect for catching up on the antics from the long weekend! Well, for some - while a few customers were chit-chatting, our forest chefs were busy cooking up a storm! Luckily, the storm was only metaphorical, and despite the colder weather, we stayed dry! ⛅
We had an excellent (and very messy!) painting session on Tuesday morning, just before the wonderful photographer Emma arrived (silly educators!🤦🏻♀️) 🎨 Luckily, our Little Forest Folk-ers got cleaned up just in time and looked picture perfect! Emma commented on how wonderfully characterful and well-behaved all our little explorers were - no surprise here! In fact, you could say they were super ‘focused’ on the instructions! It was amazing seeing our friends shine for the camera, and we can’t wait to see the bigger picture when the photos come back! 📸
On Wednesday, we had a special raft-building activity! With this in mind, we started the morning with an adventure walk to find lots of sticks… it's fair to say we found more than you can shake a stick at! 🪵
Next, we stopped for some still life drawing - this time with a ‘blooming’ lovely focus: gorgeous irises! 🌸 All the children did so well ‘branching out’ and focusing on the activity, especially our friends who don’t usually gravitate toward arts and crafts. It was amazing to see their creativity ‘blossom’! ✏
In the afternoon, we set to work ‘launching’ into our raft-building challenge - testing to see if they would really stay afloat! It was a small group activity, so while some friends set sail with their creations, others enjoyed some fun face painting. This was a great activity for seeing the children’s patience sparkle, as many friends sat together waiting to have their faces painted - some even saying how important it is to have patience, while chatting about their friends’ designs. Almost everyone wanted to be dragons or unicorns, and they looked truly enchanting! 🐉🦄 For those who weren’t rafting or waiting to gallop by and watch the painting, we had an extra large climbing frame to keep everyone fired up. It was great to see everyone going with the flow and making the most of the afternoon!
Off the back of our raft-building day - and riding the wave of child-led interest - we returned to rafts on Thursday! This time, we washed up on a deserted island setup. There was a fire for roasting fish, a cozy driftwood den for relaxing and an ocean teeming with sharks, a whale and two trusty rafts - perfect for exploring the seven seas! 🏝 Equipped with binoculars, a navigation globe and paddles, our little sea-farers were ready for adventure. With fishing rods and magnetic fish, they were 'reeling' in the fun! 🎣 It was goodbye forest nursery, hello beach nursery! 🌊
The children ‘anchored’ themselves in the play and spent the whole morning enjoying it together! In the afternoon, still inspired by rafts, two friends requested to make a floating raft using sticks and - unlike the day before - grass and natural materials to hold it together instead of string! 🌿 The children did an amazing job ‘rooting’ around to find the perfect materials and patiently waited for the rafts to be constructed - which took some time. It was fiddly work, but luckily it wasn't quite like watching the grass grow! ⏳
All in all, it was an amazing week, and we can't wait to sail into next week and see what’s on the horizon! ⛵️
Little Forest Folk
Fulham