We love the school holidays. Freedom to play and therefore some very excited school age children joining us for fun in the forest. We've had a fabulous Halloween-y week full of creature discoveries and lots of creative play.
We've been on animal hunts through the forest to see what we could find - which much to the children's delight resulted in a large toad and worm showing off their mud strewn bodies to the entire nursery.
The children were fascinated by the appearance of the toad as we've had such a dry summer it's been a while since we've had frogs or toads on site. The children built a lovely tipi then greatly enjoyed sheltering in it and creating small world games involving little houses. They balanced on our new rope lines with hands and feet with immense concentration - it takes quite a lot of coordination, balance and strength to crab along the double rope lines and we were impressed by how many of our little ones could manage it!
We've been using tools to whittle sticks as it's starting to feel properly Autumnal so we've had lots of fires this week. A marshmallow tastes so much better when you've whittled the point off a stick and created your own natural toasting fork to toast your treat over the fire on.
For dinner this week our clever chefs made little pork and apple burgers served with a salad of cucumber, petit pops, edamame and little gem lettuce. They cooked, then devoured then made a simple but tasty dessert of natural yoghurt served with pick your own topping consisting of seeds and dried fruit.
We've enjoyed the excuse of Halloween for spooky fun and have made spiders webs, drawn Halloween pictures and have enjoyed face painting with pumpkins, bats and skeletons galore. Our snacks have been bat shaped 'crisps' and 'witches fingers' as well as pumpkin tangerines and jelly worms. We've also enjoyed pumpkin carving and many other halloween games. Fun!
Staff have gone all out with their Halloween fancy dress which has utterly mesmerised some of the children and greatly amused the others. We have the best staff ever, it's official!
Learn more about the benefits of outdoor play