Into Spring we sprang this week, despite some attempts by rainclouds to wash us out of the forest on Wednesday! Wow, that was a wet one! As a result, we have been given the gift of MUD GLORIOUS MUD in the forest! As we have had plentiful ingredients for mud pies, mud teas, mud cakes, mud pasta bakes, mud bento boxes and mud pizzas, the mud kitchen has been a hive of activity with an ever-changing menu that reflects the diverse imaginations and palates of our little chefs. 

We certainly had a magical week in which we worked on building our community spirit, including a warm welcome from our regulars to our new visitors joining us for holiday camp sessions - it was great to have some familiar faces return and there was a huge variety of play and conversation on camp all week. 

With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, we were inspired to spend this week practicing kindness, compassion and consideration, in an effort to understand our own and other people’s emotions, promoting some extra love and care among our community!

We are building our emotional vocabulary at the moment by exploring our own emotions and how to express them but also discussing what others might be feeling and how we can be sensitive to that.

This week was all about sensory explorations and connecting with the cultural celebrations of Lunar New Year in many ways. This included through food as we discussed rice, noodles and the utensils we might use to cook, serve and eat these ingredients.

We shifted our attention from shapes and patterns to all sorts of marks and prints this week as we set up lots of opportunities for mark-making of all descriptions. The children looked at a range of animal footprints in clay, flour and on paper and were on the lookout for horse, dog and magpie tracks on the paths into and out of camp. We used natural materials to make marks too, painting with leaves, printing with carved potatoes and rolling patterns into mud. 

Thankfully we were back on camp for the whole of this week, as the frosts subsided and turned the ground into squishy, slushy, satisfying mud - our favourite! 

What a wonderfully Wintery way to start 2025, we are so happy to be back in the forest with our favourite crew! Frosty grass, crunchy mud, frozen puddles and a chill in the air have given us plenty of opportunities this week to see our landscape through a different lens, especially in the mornings.

The key phrase around camp this week was ‘heavy work’, as we challenged our little friends to flex their muscles, test their stamina and whistle while they worked.

Another cold blast of weather this week prompted lots of walks, dancing and running games to keep warm as we branched out into the wider area of the common and explored the environment a little further than last week.

Our intrepid bunch have been digging into every nook and cranny of the forest this week, seeking out bugs, grubs and mini beasts to investigate in detail.