On the 9th day of Christmas, the forest gave to me: An adventure walk to the pond, and lots of ducks I could see! 🦆
On the 10th day of Christmas, the forest gave to me: Mud kitchen fun, and my friends learning ukulele! 🎸
On the 11th day of Christmas, the forest gave to me: Penne craft creations, dance party passion, and maze running with plenty of glee! 🏃♂️✨
On the 12th day of Christmas, the forest gave to me: An adventure to the boats, playing in the sand, football with my friends, and lunch at Bishop's Tree! 🌳
Of course, a whole week of forest fun is more than can be squeezed into a poorly adapted Christmas song. However, it was only right to start with a song, because this week we focused on all things expressive arts and design! 🎶 From music to crafts, the children were full of creativity.
We practiced singing our favourite songs, danced to our favourite jigs (perfect for staying toasty in the chilly weather), and even had a ukulele lesson from Dan, our resident music man. With creativity at the heart of the week, we also had plenty of creative craft opportunities.
On Monday, the children brushed up on their painting skills as they decorated their own paper Christmas trees 🎄. They truly drew on their creativity, using all sorts of materials—from tissue paper to sequins—to decorate their trees.
Of course, all of our forest friends are confident in the kitchen, having spent countless hours crafting mud-based delicacies in our well-loved mud kitchen. But on Monday, our creative flair extended to the culinary arts as we made smoothies! 🥤 our chefs were brilliantly enthusiastic and even practiced their cutting skills with child-safe knives.
On Tuesday, the crafting continued! The children created beautiful holiday decorations. Some even threaded beads onto theirs, showcasing not only their creativity but also advanced fine motor skills! ✂️ But the crafts didn’t stop there—our Little Forest Folk also made holiday-themed stamps with lots of messy red and green paint🎨
Wednesday was another creative day. We did more painting and worked on expressive collages featuring penne pasta. Some children expressed an interest in their names at the drawing station, so we followed their lead and practiced drawing letters and words! This kept us all busy, but since it wasn’t the warmest activity, we followed it up with a trip to the maze, where the children ran, laughed, and explored joyfully— which, luckily for music-writing purposes, could be described as "with glee!" 😂
In addition to arts and creativity, our focus for the week was to explore emotions and foster friendships. Never ones to let the weather dictate our fun, we let the weather work to our advantage, as adventure walks became a perfect opportunity not only to warm up, but also for the children to pair up and chat while exploring. It was lovely to see them walk together, often offering pairings of children who don’t always gravitate toward each other. As they discussed what they were seeing with one another, some wonderful child-led conversations were sparked. ✨
The magnum opus of our adventuring came on Thursday, national Christmas Jumper Day. Warm and snug in our festive garments we had an entire adventure day! Featuring boats 🚤, Christmas trees 🎄, all sorts of animals 🦆, the pond 🌊, and even a trip to the beach 🏖️—luckily, the children’s imaginations are active enough to appreciate a lovely “beach,” even if it’s technically a sandy play area in the park! Counting our lucky Christmas stars... thank you, chilly weather, for giving us the beach all to ourselves!
What a great week and we can’t wait to see what next week has in store! 🌲🌲🎄🌲
Little Forest Folk
Fulham