Our Week in the Forest
This week, we have all been focusing on looking after ourselves and our local environment when the weather is so cold. The children were given a table full of warm accessories, such as gloves, snoods, socks and challenged by the educators with getting them on by themselves! They proved to be very good at this - so lots more independent dressing opportunities will be handed over to many of our Little Forest Folk-ers over the coming weeks! There were reasons that the children needed more independent practice - we went ice smashing on the golf course and the Common! The children were taught how to identify and walk carefully over a range of icy surfaces, they then cracked some larger areas, looked at the thickness of the ice and listened to the larger pieces as they crashed to the floor! The educators explored, with the children and discussed why the ice was rough underneath, but smooth on top and we all talked about why there was ice and why the ice would melt during the daytime. One of our little explorers asked everyone if they knew what an iceberg was and when some didn’t, proudly gave them a very accurate explanation! It is wonderful when our children become the educators!
In line with learning about looking after our environment, the educators also talked to our little learners about our local wildlife - on our adventure walks, the children spotted bug hotels, fed the ducks (who were VERY thankful!), looked for large leaf mounds and discussed which animals may be hibernating in there whilst also learning what is meant by the word ‘nocturnal’. On one of our indoor days, the educators challenged the children to create a safe place for a hedgehog to hibernate and then (of course!) challenged the children to create their own clay hedgehogs to place within the habitat! This was enjoyed by our group very much! All this, alongside building the largest train tracks (in the world!), rolling down hills, checking maps, learning about trees, singing and dancing to a new group favourite - ‘Golden’, as well as our nursery favourites, knowing what ‘black ice’ means, decorating the Gingerbread Man’s house and making their own snowflakes, our educators believe that the team has had a fabulous week indoors, sheltering from the harsh winter weather!
Eco Schools: Green Flag award
We have already completed a wealth of activities towards our Green Flag award including introducing composting and installing a new compost bin, as well as planting, caring for and harvesting potatoes, carrots, strawberries and tomatoes. We have created a planter using an old water barrel, two old tyres and eco bricks and have been recycling all sorts of materials!
To add to our children’s awareness of global issues, and to make links with our ‘Winter’ and ‘Polar Regions’ themes, we are in the process of adopting a Polar Bear! So that the children can continue some of the great learning they will be doing, once our ‘Welcome pack’ arrives, we would love for the children to look after our bear at home, on a ‘mini-bear holiday’ and spend some time taking photos, find out some things about polar bears and what makes their habitat so important, amazing and delicate! The children could learn facts, songs and stories, or create their own songs, stories and poetry, they could even create their own art! We would love for them to bring something back in with them when their ‘holiday time’ with our bear is completed and these could all be added to our adoption book and display! We will update further, and send home some ideas, once our pack has arrived.
Wimbledon Food Bank
At the end of the autumn term, we set some themes around food, farming and where in the world our food comes from. This, along with our wonderful Christmas break, has highlighted to some of our educators how much we all have, compared to those that do not. We are currently educating the children about the need to look after local wildlife by recycling old Christmas trees and using our fruit waste and seeds to make feeders for the birds, by considering what animals may need for hibernation, providing areas for them to shelter in and so on. We would really like to extend this to us looking after local people who may not have as much as we do, who may be spending a lot of their income on heating, or recovering from the financial pressures of Christmas time, leaving not so much for food and other necessary items. To support this, we would like to do a collection for Wimbledon Food Bank, in connection with The Trussell Trust, to provide items that are needed at this difficult time of year.
Below is the latest list of needs from their website and we will update this for your information over the next couple of weeks. Our aim is to be able to make a donation by the end of the month/start of February - so anything that your wonderful children can bring in for the donation would be very greatly received to take along with us! Please note that the list is what is desperately needed, but any donations are welcome -
Urgently needed items (updated on 5th January 2026)
FOODBANK:
Tinned Meat, Squash / Long Life Juice (Not Chilled), Noodles / Micro Pasta / Micro Rice Meals, Tinned Vegetable (Peas, Carrots, Sweetcorn, Potatoes), UHT Milk, Toothpaste, Shampoo
GROWBABY:
Dinners for aged 12 months +, Desserts for aged 6 months to 3 years, Toothpaste for aged 0-2 years
Baby Wipes
We've got plenty of:
Pasta, Baked Beans, Pulses, Lentils and Chickpeas
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon Village