The festive celebrations have certainly continued this week, Santa's sleigh landed on the bowling green early Monday morning and the children enjoyed engaging in lots of festive role play, flying over chimney tops and gathering ‘presents’ from the field to pack the sacks with. Creativity was utilised to thank the reindeer's for their hard work when some tasty carrots and Christmas cookies (pieces of tree bark) were fed to them.
Tuesday marked the day of the Winter Solstice, the shortest hours of sunlight and the longest dark hours of the year! We celebrated with festive songs and dancing. In the afternoon, Little Forest elves were hard at work practising their present wrapping skills, great patience and endurance was shown in securing down all the corners and using tools such as tape and scissors to cut out the right sizes. We also had a go at our knot tying skills when adding the finishing touches of golden ribbon before they were given to friends and put under our decorative Christmas tree.
Wednesday brought a blanket of frost to the field, the morning was spent inside making Christmas cookies from play-dough and enjoying winter themed story-time,’Aliens love panta Claus' and ‘Father Christmas comes up trumps’ were keen favourites! As giggles and laughter were shared. Thank you to Sam, who set up a wonderful campfire for us to enjoy a toasty afternoon filled with yummy roasted vegan marshmallows, music and group reflection on our favourite parts of the day.
We’ve been busy this week with lots of green gardening hands hard at work. Five wheelbarrows of soil, nine recycled car tires and several little eager hands filled with spades later and we have three new planting beds filled and ready to utilise and extend our sensory plant areas in the new year. The children have been exploring scents of lavender and rosemary on the field already and we are looking forward to adding a wider variety of plants in the new year. We also welcomed and re-homed a bamboo tree this week, donated kindly by Matt, which we’re all excited to look after and watch grow over the months to come.
We would like to wish all our Little Forest Folk families a warm and wonderful festive period and look forward to welcoming you all back in 2022!
Little Forest Folk
Wandsworth