Following the announcement of our Queen’s award in April, we are delighted to share an article written about Little Forest Folk by a journalist who visited us in May.
We’ve been bursting with excitement and now that it’s the Queen’s birthday and the official announcement day, we are absolutely delighted to finally share with you the news that Little Forest Folk has been given the royal seal of approval.
Following our being selected by Tatler as being one of the finest nurseries in the nation last month, we are now delighted to share with you an article written about Little Forest Folk by a journalist who visited us in our Wimbledon setting a few weeks ago.
Well, this weekend was the long awaited Nursery World Awards! It was a fabulous event and we were delighted to be recognised in such a large industry such as the early years to be one of the industry leaders.
Our Little Forest Folk-ers have helped us do some weeding and tidying up of our cottage garden and done lots of planting. This encourages environmental awareness and stewardship and helps them develop a meaningful connection to the natural world and take pride in the environment and little community we have here at Little Forest Folk Winkworth.
This week at Winkworth we’ve been gardening! We’ve sectioned off a little part of our back garden for a project to put in some raised beds. We hope to grow beans, tomatoes and sunflowers when it is ready. Our little gardeners have been very helpful, digging and making the ground flat with rakes and are excited to talk and learn about all the steps involved in growing our own plants!
Mrs Claus’ bakery has had a lot of customers this week too. Our Little Forest Folk-ers got to work to roll out the gorgeous cinnamon playdough before using different size cookie cutters to make the shapes. They then used natural materials to make the face and the buttons of our little cinnamon people.
What a cold start we had this week, but we still saw so many sparkling smiles that inspired us to think all about our teeth and how we look after them. This prompted some interesting questions. Do animals brush their teeth? We set off into the Arboretum to see what we could spot, but there was not a tooth brushing squirrel or a flossing owl in sight! There were however some Christmas nutcrackers in the path with big bright smiles. Using sticks covered in lichen, the children used their forest toothbrushes to scrub the nutcracker’s teeth.
We started off the week exploring the magic of shapes in the forest. The children spotted shapes in the natural environment and discussed which they liked the best. We kept warm exploring the different shapes of our obstacle course and then spent a cosy early evening making some lovely circle and star shaped Christmas tree ornaments for our nursery Christmas tree.
This week at Little Forest Folk Winkworth has been full of autumn fun as we’ve embraced the wild and windy weather. We started our week illuminating the darker mornings and evenings in our forest with all the colours of Diwali! The children ventured out for all the excitement and laughter of a big rain walk adventure.
We started the week hunting for mushrooms in the Arboretum. Our intrepid Little Forest Folk-ers set out on their adventure walk with maps of the Arboretum and laminated sheets to identify different types of fungi. It was wonderful to see the children excitedly point out landmarks and signposts that they saw on the map in real life.
First they transformed into billy goats on an exciting adventure all the way to the wetlands of Winkworth Arboretum. By the lake they looked for the right size sticks to be their billy goat horns and attached them to their head bands.
