Every year we plant Christmas trees with roots and several have successfully rooted and grow a little bit more as time goes on. We like to think they’ll be towering specimens fit for Trafalgar Square one day! This week we re-planted two trees, with all children highly involved and working together to get large holes dug with a real spade, then filled with some of our own compost that everyone had been making all year long. Next, trees were lifted and pushed into place with everyone carefully filling up the rest of the hole together. We have a third we will re-plant next week and we look forward to nurturing it day-in day-out! This activity has been great for turn taking, physical development and understanding the world, with plenty of time for lots of great conversations about the Christmas break away from Little Forest Folk.

Over in the forest this week, Dan created a multi-layered activity themed around a book called “The Scarecrow Wedding” by Julia Donaldson. At the end of the hello song, children were asked to call out to the birds by making bird noises. Dan, dressed as a crow, appeared from the forest to great delight, sat down at the circle and read the story. At the end, we all talked about birds and what we knew about them, and our big crow friend then let us know that there were lots of worms (lengths of paracord) hidden all around the site for everyone to find and feed him. Lots of adventurous searching followed, and several dozen “worms” were fed to the happy crow!

Another great week has been had and we’re looking forward to extending the play of this week into the next. Have a great weekend everyone.

Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth