Hello Everyone!
Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year on behalf of all the staff at Twickenham. We hope you all enjoyed a lovely Christmas break. After a nice week-long rest, the staff are eager to work harder than ever to make the forest an exciting and stimulating place to be in 2022!
The forest is looking in good shape after our pre-Christmas clean/tidy-up. Tuesday morning was a chance for us to experience what it is like at other sites, as we needed to reassemble all the tents and tarpaulins ready to welcome the children at 8 a.m. We are very lucky at Twickenham to have so much space and the ability to leave much of the forest set-up in place. While we were away Mr Fox and the cheeky gang of squirrels kept a good eye on the site for us.
The weather has proved a challenge this week, as we all re-adjust to being outside all day. As well as ensuring all children are kept in hats, gloves and plenty of layers, we have some small hand-warmers that they can share and a larger blanket containing two hot water bottles for anyone requiring a bit of extra warmth. Well done to all our wonderful parents for making sure all the children came in dressed appropriately. Gloves are particularly important for children at this time of the year. Can we kindly request that names or labels are added to every pair of gloves so that we can ensure they are returned to you at the end of the day.
This week the children have been fascinated to observe the frosty condition of the forest. Many of them talked about how shiny the frost looked on our wooden benches when the sun was shining. One child said all the frost was delivered by ‘Jack Frosty’. Some of the group noticed how you could ‘draw’ on the table using fingers to make marks on the frosty surface. Many attempted to form letters in the frost and noticed how some sections were harder to use than others. We also placed frosty leaves onto the table and looked closely at how they looked using magnifying glasses. One child pointed out that the frost had melted by the afternoon ‘because the sun came out.’
With all the recent windy conditions we’ve encountered, the forest floor has provided us with lots of nice sticks and branches to use for various craft activities. In particular, the children enjoyed taking out the coloured string and using it to tie around the sticks and branches to make ‘magical wands.’ One child turned a staff member into a frog! It was no croak! After making their wands the children acted out being wizards and witches. With ‘Room on the Broom’ and ‘Winnie the Witch’ remaining firm favourites at story time, they had plenty of ideas and inspiration for their role-play adventures.
As well as frost, Tuesday provided plenty of large puddles for us to play in. The children enjoyed taking the opportunity to splash and run through these in the knowledge that they were appropriately dressed to withstand the thick, oozy liquid! In some of the muddier parts of the forest the children used the crates and wooden planks to make a walkway for those wishing to avoid the squelchy conditions. However, some of our Forest Folk-ers preferred to use it to jump off into the puddles instead.
The clay that had been set out on the craft table took a soaking too and this gave the children the opportunity to explore the texture of wet clay and made it far easier to mould and shape into what they wanted. A popular choice was to roll and squeeze the clay to make long, slimy slugs and snakes.
Over the coming weeks we will be talking about and looking at the birds that we see in our local environment. This week we have had many close encounters with a brave and curious Robin who has shown a keen interest to come and watch us play. As our children show kindness to all the creatures of the forest, the Robin has continued to return, safe in the knowledge that he has found some friendly humans.
This week has been shortened due to the bank holiday and inset day, so it seems strange to already be wishing you a lovely weekend. Next week we will be back to our usual five days of forest fun! Have a warm and restful extended weekend and see you all next week!
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham