Santa Claus is coming to town
Hello everyone,
We’ve had the most wonderful week in the forest at Fulham. The children have been ever so happy exploring the natural world around them, learning about trees, leaves, berries, and mushrooms, offering suggestions to why some leaves (holly bush) remain green all year round - “This one is very green because it’s ‘pricklish’”! We know how children can naturally be curious about things such as berries or mushrooms and fungi, which is why we reiterate the importance of the rule ‘no picking, no licking’ every day in the forest so they know how to navigate around them and stay safe.
Our adventurers have been learning about their own bodies as well. Trying new things, developing their motor skills, and challenging their strengths and overcoming limitations on our obstacle course. Each day, they try jumping from a higher log or balancing on a wobbly log without holding hands with an educator or asking a friend to help them if they don’t feel confident to do it on their own. Unsurprisingly, everybody jumps in to give our little ones a hand! Our children are kind and look after one another if they see a friend in need and that is super special.
Spending the day surrounded by nature and calm spaces allows our children to develop their resilience, their communication, and social skills and how to self-regulate more easily. This term, we’ve introduced a daily routine visual aid for our children to access whenever they wish to know ‘is it time to go home?’. The children loved it and used it on their own account every time they wanted to know what would happen next.
As we approach the end of term and our children are fully settled in the forest, we have been expanding our adventure walks further during the day so they can look for natural materials to play with or add to their creations when we get back to camp or just run freely in the meadow laughing and rolling on the soft grass.
Our Christmas celebrations have been more exciting this week with a very special visit in our forest… Santa came over to drop some wonderful presents to our Little Forest Folk-ers! After building an amazing grotto for Santa, the children played under the fairy lights that hung from the top and made beautiful decorations with clay to hang on their Christmas tree!
Our team would like to wish our families a super special Christmas this year! We feel very blessed and thankful to have such generous and wonderful children and parents! Our days are ever so merry and bright when we’re in the forest!
Merry Christmas everybody and thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the love!
Little Forest Folk
Fulham