Hello everybody,
Our week was short, but absolutely magical! Our Little Forest Folk-ers have been on adventure walks every day and exploring the grounds in the Palace gardens. They’ve discovered amazing hiding places and secret passages which in order to get to they had to climb, slide, crawl under branches and swish through big leaves.
We’ve spent a bit more time indoors this week and our children really enjoyed playing with our letter puzzles and memory games. They made some Christmas cookies to bake at home and the children had an amazing time measuring the ingredients, mixing and rolling the dough, then sprinkling some magic fairy dust over the top before putting in their little boxes to take home later that day.
The children have also decorated a tree cookie with their name, which can help them identify the letters in their names when we arrive in the forest in the mornings during circle time. Although, some of them already have a really good grasp for identifying letters.
We also talked about our feelings and emotions, which has become a natural part of our day since we introduced the Zones of Regulation in the forest. The Zones of Regulation creates a system to categorise how the body feels and emotions into the four coloured-zones with which the children can easily identify. Blue Zone if a child feels sad, tired or bored. Green Zone is described as calm, focused and happy. Yellow Zone may be a child feeling anxiety, frustration or excitement. Red Zone if a child feels angry, terror or rage. Helping our children find strategies and tools with which they can move between zones is a long process, but every day they listen to the language and the concept gradually becomes embedded in their routine. We have created some tree cookies with the different coloured zones, which our children can access and use at any time of their day.
This term has been incredible; we have met our new children and their families, we said goodbye to some of our staff but had some new amazing additions! With each transition, our team grew stronger and we are incredibly proud of all of them. We’ve received an outstanding from Ofsted and that is all because our team goes above and beyond their job to provide our children with amazing learning opportunities and experiences every single day. We are ever so thankful to all our children and their families for being so understanding, so generous and beautiful human beings. We hope you all have a magical holiday and a happy 2022!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham