This week has seen us return to fantastic weather, the sun is shining and gloves and hats are almost a thing of the past, but we are not quite out of the woods yet (excuse the pun!) The warming weather as well as the time of year has given lots of reasons for fun and lots of different activities. 

We have been focusing a lot on independence, how we can promote it and encouraging our little people to try and manage obstacles and challenges before seeking help. We have amalgamated this into our play by hosting activities that help promote these values! 

What a week! We actually saw the sun, and revelled in it for a couple of days. We enjoyed some amazing adventure walks and even gate crashed a tractor party! 

We have also spent time educating the children about the Lunar New Year. We read the book “The Great Race” which is a children’s adaptation of the story of Chinese New Year and we also enjoyed exploring a tuff tray filled with rice, Chinese takeaway menus and little red envelopes to symbolise the start of Lunar New Year. A big happy Lunar New Year to all of our Chinese families. 

Children's Mental Health Week, looking after ourselves and our local environment 

February has arrived in the forest and has brought us a lot of rain! For us this is perfect - puddle jumping, adventure walks and mud play all make for an incredible day in the forest! 

The children have learned and learned and learned this week! At the start of the week, our lovely team were introduced to how to notice ‘the first signs of spring’, by looking for flower shoots, such as daffodils, snowdrops and bluebells. They also looked at tree and bramble branches to see if they could see any new shoots or buds growing. 

As the sun sets on a soggy week, we reminisce on all the fun we’ve had in the forest.

We collected and directed the water into the tuff tray and then put fish and fishing nets into the pond. To keep warm we sang the silly banana song and did lots of running around, which provided lots of giggles!

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!

Educators have used lots of ‘Panto’ language (“Oh no we haven’t!”) to make the camp feel festive and over the week, we have all thought about what ‘evil plans’ we all might have - all very panto-like! Paula’s evil plan was to give the rest of the staff a box of After Eights, with all the chocolates gone - but with the wrappers still in the box (VERY Evil!) and some of our wonderfully ‘naughty’ children thought about putting ice in Sam’s hood

This week, we have thought a lot about size and shape! We have considered how bear footprints and tracks might be ‘bigger’ or ‘smaller’ than ours.

This week we have been thinking about caring for ourselves and our environment, in particular trees, teeth and ourselves - especially when trying to keep warm and dry!

The children looked up at the clear blue skies and down at white sparkling frost, looked around themselves at the hues of yellow, brown, red and green that can be seen falling to the ground and at creams, whites, reds and browns when spotting mushrooms.

Learning all about Aurora Borealis and welcoming winter

This week has been all about team work, shared and sustained play, safety and construction! 

This week has had our Little Forest Folk-ers focusing on safety and excitement around Bonfire andFireworks Night. We did this in a variety of ways; physically, in song and also in our artwork!

Jamie gathered the biggest pumpkin he could find, before seeking the help of the children to detail how our orange friend was going to look! We had some child-friendly safety knives at the ready and we carved his face out. We couldn’t quite settle on a name, so we took him back to the indoor nursery to be on display! 

What a busy week we have had in the depths of Wimbledon Common this week! 

More galactic fun continues in the forest! Safely back to earth.