What a wonderful year it has been!

It’s been a fantastic 2016 for Little Forest Folk. We began the year with a Wimbledon nursery and ended the year with a Wimbledon nursery, a Chiswick nursery and a Fulham nursery. We are delighted to have been able to welcome all of our fantastic new families into the Little Forest Folk community. The experience we offer is so special that we remain ever grateful for the support you provide us that allows us to grow and share our experience with ever more children. Along the way in 2016 we’ve been graded as Ofsted Outstanding, we’ve been featured by Tatler’s Best Nurseries Guide as a ‘game-changer’, The Telegraph came to spend a day with us learning about what we do, as did ITV news! A busy year!

Absolutely none of these achievements however compare to the pride and joy we feel when we see how happy and how utterly incredible our children are. They are the reason Little Forest Folk exists and there’s nothing that will put a smile on the face of a Little Forest Folk staff member quicker than a giggling child. Our Christmas party this week was a great example of happy children and our entire teams have come away revived by sharing such a festive and feel-good day with not only our children but our families too. Thanks for joining us!

So what does 2017 bring for us?

Well of course, lots more deep learning, disguised as rollicking, muddy, bouncing, chattering fun. But a few other things on our horizon too…

In Spring this year, we are planning to launch a bring-your-mummies-and-daddies-to-school week, where we will invite our children to bring along a parent to spend a few hours on site with us joining in the fun and games and seeing for yourself the crazy capers your little ones get up to every day. We do our best to keep you connected to your child’s time with us through our snaps, observations, nursery handovers and email updates as well as our newsletters, but nothing really compares to sitting in the mud digging in a puddle for treasure with your little ones, so we are really looking forward to this adventure week! More details will be announced in January.

Spring is going to be a busy time for us as it’s also when the elusive Wandsworth nursery shall hopefully be finally opening it’s doors. Our expansion continues!

In July we are honoured, excited (& terrified) to have been asked to speak at the prestigious Festival of Childhood. This is a wonderful festival that celebrates the early years of children and would be fascinating for anyone with an interest in the early years. There are some inspirational speakers at this event, like Sir Ken Robinson, Wendy Ellyat, Dame Helen Ghosh and many others. We are truly honoured that the work Little Forest Folk are doing to provide a child-led, play-based learning experience in nature is being recognised and hope we can through our speech encourage even more people to take children back outside into nature.

The first half of the year looks pretty busy already! We are, as ever, constantly working in the background on our dream to open a Little Forest Folk school. We would love to continue our ethos and style of pedagogy through to the next stages of learning. We are now at the stage of trying to locate a prospective site for our school. If any of you are property developers, or know anything about the challenging world of finding available green space and possibly a building to host our school, do please get in touch as we would welcome any assistance anyone can offer in finding a site. Our dream school site needs of course to have a large outdoor space, preferably woodland and also either needs a building or at least the potential to put up permanent ‘temporary structures’ such as yurts, geodesic domes etc. Greenfield, brownfield, any kind of field really if it lets us progress towards our school! Any assistance or great ideas would be greatly welcomed.

We won’t take up much more of your time as this is a hectic time of year but we wanted to wish you and your entire families a very merry Christmas. Please give your little ones a cuddle from us on Christmas Day and enjoy this special time together.

We are delighted to announce that thanks to your hard working little children's efforts and your generosity there will be 49 homeless people enjoying a good meal & a warm bed for the night. Thank you so much. And please do explain to your children how they have helped those less fortunate than them.

We will look forward to seeing you all refreshed and raring for action in the New Year. And we hope your houses aren’t full of teeny tiny holes from industrial palm drill owners!