This week, we’ve enjoyed getting into the festive spirit! We explored Christmas and Hanukkah by making baubles for our pallet Christmas tree and spinning tops as a dreidel to play for Hanukkah. We have practised our tool work safety using the saw and palm drill. For both activities we used the same tools and techniques, it’s was great to have opportunities to practise, strengthen and progress our skills. For the baubles, we sawed a wood cookie and then drilled a hole. After, we painted and decorated them using sparkly paint before threading string through to make an attachment.

This week we’ve enjoyed many activities to keep us warm in the frost and freezing temperatures. Our walk-ins have explored the concept of frost and ice, we discussed the freezing point of water which is why it’s not safe to walk in frozen puddles, so we found sticks! Some sticks were big enough to crack and smash the frozen puddles…

The magic of winter has well and truly arrived at Little Forest Folk Wimbledon and this week we had our first snow of the season! The excitement on the children's faces as the huge white flakes cascaded down was amazing! They tried to catch them on their tongues and see who had the biggest flake. We also looked at the different patterns of each flake, trying to see if we could spot any that were similar. 

Remembrance Day, festivals and exploring the autumn environment…all in a week's work at Little Forest Folk Wimbledon!

Fireworks and Bonfire Night have been the talk of the forest this week! The children have enjoyed so many activities based around creating colourful pictures of fireworks using different techniques. We have done straw-blowing painting, stamping, wax creations… so many things to explore the incredible colours and shapes of fireworks. 

This week we’ve been talking more and more about Halloween - what it is and what everyone is planning on dressing up as. We have organised activities this week that explore different features of Halloween. Spider painting was a huge success; they dangled down from a cobweb made by one of our educators!

This week we have enjoyed celebrating the festival of Diwali! We learnt about the story and its characters: Lord Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Ravana. Sita was taken by the evil ten headed monster (Ravana) so Lord Rama worked together with Lakshmana (his brother) to rescue his wife.

The Gruffalo lives in Fishpond Woods and for years the children have been walking past his house everyday without seeing him. This week, however, we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Gruffalo, the fox and the owl! We then went onto site and saw the mouse’s reading house and the snake's log pile den. The children then had to find some more logs to help the snake rebuild his house, to help ensure he couldn’t be found by the Gruffalo!

We’ve had meaningful conversations about harvest time and where our food comes from - learning about planting, growing and how food makes its way to the shops

Role play was buzzing throughout the week. Some children transformed the role play area into a cosy house where they looked after teddies and served tea, while others became doctors, handing out “strawberry medicine” to keep everyone healthy.

A busy week all round at Little Forest Folk Wimbledon! Our new starters have settled in so well and have really found their feet in the forest. We have had so many fun activities out for everyone, from instrument making to pasta crafts! 

We headed to the park to fly the kite! We waited for a gust of wind to ensure the kite was able to fly and then the children enjoyed running up and down the grass to allow the kite to get some height.

We also did some more tool work this week, making more habitats for bugs and adding them to the bug hotel. The children whittled sticks and placed them in tins to create a little house for the insects to climb in and out of. It was great to see the children testing their whittling skills and also seeing our new children taking part too.

We have made rivers by pushing the water down hills, added the rain water to our mud kitchen recipes and used it to test out our fine motor skills with collecting items from the puddles.

The children have been lucky enough to have lots of fires recently and we have all enjoyed taking part in cooking lots of different things. One of the delicious treats we’ve cooked up again this week was Bannock, a type of bread made on the fire.

This week started off with some cooking and our budding chefs used some apples from one of our friend’s gardens to make an apple cake.

We went on an adventure mission, looking for frogs, tadpoles

Our Little Forest Folk-ers have been creating their own verses to songs besides making their own microphones and musical shakers to go along with their tunes.

Bugs, adventure walks and necklace making - just some of the fun things that have been happening at Little Forest Folk Wimbledon this week! 

We have enjoyed some exciting tool work this week, which included sawing wood cookies and making necklaces out of brambles.