Oh my, how the year has flown by and as we leap into winter the children delight in the crispy weather and the new schedule. December makes us so excited for the holidays, trips away, being with families and having a rest.
This week has been all about building our muscles - we enjoyed a pinching peg game to strengthen our hands and fingers. Drawing and painting to capture our creativity. Building and designing cities, rockets and homes using sticks and balls, blocks and toilet roll tubes. As well as textural play with sand, fake snow, mud painting and ice.
The Christmas crafts zone has involved tree and snowmen building, our young artists have been inspired and creative throughout the week. They drew and painted upon cardboard and transformed one dimensional trees into three dimensional Christmas trees using two tree shapes joined together. Wonderful selfie opportunities presented themselves in the forest too, an artistic staff member created an elf with its face cut out, where the children and staff could pop their heads through and pretend they were elves. The Elfie Selfie was very popular!
Our advent Christmas and winter-themed story books are always a popular activity as 2-3 new books are read out each day, introducing the children to the delights of arguing crayons, to reindeers, elves and cold animals looking for shelter in the snowy weather, and so much more.
Plus, one of the best things about December in the forest is Ruby the elf - she comes to Twickenham every December and hides all over the forest and the children have to find her. Sometimes she’s hiding under the tarpaulin, sometimes in the toilet tent area, we found her climbing our majestic Plane tree the other day and today she’s been hiding in the sleeping teepee. All our Little Forest Folk-ers have had a wonderful time so far discovering her hiding places each day!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham