The forest is looking beautiful! Flowers are popping up everywhere and after a winter of browns and greens we are enthralled by the colours appearing all over the nature reserve.

As it's bluebell season we've been exploring the wider nature reserve on our daily adventure walks to find carpets of bluebells. We've been learning about how bluebells go and have been learning how to treat flowers very gently and show care and respect for the natural world. Teaching our children how to care for their natural environment not only teaches them to become the future custodians of our planet but also teaches them valuable life skills such as compassion and kindness.

As part of our adventure walks the children are enjoying seeing the various tree species in the nature reserve. They have found tree monsters, dinosaur trees have even ridden a few tree 'animals'. It's wonderful to see their imaginations and creativity sparked and watch them bounce ideas excitingly off each other. Lots of fun and also great practise to enhance social and communication life skills.

We've been building and at the same time talking about shapes and counting. We've been collecting, we've been mark making. We've been reading the story 'Tidy' and learning compassion for others as we discuss how the trees may be sad after badger picked all their leaves.

We've had lots of fun water play. We've been sifting water and plants through the net and discussing how small holes in a net don't let water flow as quickly as big holes. We've been observing lovely collaborative play where we've been filling wheelbarrows and containers with water then transporting our water and learning about maths by watching levels overflowing.

Finally for cookery classes we made beetroot burgers and peeled loads of spuds to create the perfect mash!

News

Don't forget we have a bank holiday coming up this Monday so enjoy the long weekend and we will see you on Tuesday morning. If anyone is looking for a fun family day out we can't recommend the Morden Hall Park Country Show enough - it's a fabulous day out for the whole family.

Today we held a charity event where the children dressed up our practitioners and created some beautiful made-up faces! Parents are encouraged to make a donation to try and help us raise some funds for Oxfam by visiting our LFF just giving page

All proceeds will go directly to Oxfam.

Parent request

When collecting from the scout hall we ask parents to wait in the foyer for us to bring your child out to you. Last week many parents walked into the hall and some sat down at the dinner table whilst the children were eating which sadly unsettled some of our newer, younger children who didn't understand why some mummies & daddies were joining the group but not theirs. To ensure our time at the hall is fun and enjoyable for all children we would be grateful if you could not come into the hall. We know that you are incredibly excited to see your children after they've had a day away from you and we promise to bring them to you straight away! This also allows us to give you a proper handover and feedback from the day as this is difficult to do in the main hall with all the other children around.

Thanks for your consideration.

Dressing for the weather

The warmer weather (fingers crossed) looks here to stay!

As a guideline next week the children should be wearing:

ONE pair of comfortable trousers (jogging bottoms or leggings)
A long sleeve t-shirt
ONE fleecy zip up jacket
One pair of socks
Wellies

We'd like for Spring to recommend warm wellies. These wellies are neoprene based which makes them extremely flexible for easy running in, plus they have great grips and are much warmer than standard wellies so we highly recommend them.

Next week in the forest

Next week in the forest we are going to be talking more about Spring and enjoying more beautiful bluebell walks. We shall also be spending the week celebrating the great Sir David Attenborough ahead of a forest tea party we shall be throwing on Friday to celebrate his 90th birthday. Sir David Attenborough is an inspiration to us and an icon of everything our children can hope to achieve in life with their deep love of and respect for nature. We look forward to celebrating his birthday!

We are excited to begin our adventures again in the forest next week. Until then, have a lovely long weekend. Fingers crossed we see some sunshine for it!

Little Forest Folk