Leaves, glorious Autumn leaves!
Our week in the forest
Grab your hats and coats, the cold weather has arrived! After a deceptively balmy Monday to mark the end of October, November has swept into the forest with an icy blast. We have been enjoying the loss of leaves from the trees and onto our forest floor as it has provided us with a great resource for all manner of activities this week. In addition to the great number of leaves, we’ve been continuing to notice the increasing presence of different fungi and mushrooms in places we never imagined they might grow!
Groups of our children have really enjoyed collecting and piling the leaves all around Fishpond Woods. We’ve had lots of different tools out to help us with this: spades, rakes, wheelbarrows and, the easiest tool of all to use, our hands! The cooperation between children has been excellent, with more sharing occurring and working together towards a similar goal, whether that is making the biggest pile or covering each other and the adults in the leaves.
Although adult-initiated, the children have also taken to scrutinising the leaves they collect and assessing their usefulness for different arts and craft activities. Using leaf identification sheets, the children have roamed the forest selecting different leaves to then use for threading onto string. Leaves have also taken centre stage in the children’s pictures through either being glued to paper or sticks or by using wax crayons to create leaf rubbings.
Challenge week ;-)
This week could accurately be labelled ‘Challenge Week’ thanks to some fresh thinking. Using some old rope to make a swing (imagine like a vine for Tarzan), many children waited patiently to swing through the trees and loved the challenge just using their arms to swing. Also, ladders were lashed together to make a triangle over a tree branch, which made for a high climb up and over and down again.
News
Our Latest Blog
Just in case you missed this earlier in the week, here is our latest blog all about
The health benefits of wintering outdoors
ITV News Feature
For anyone that missed us on the TV last week, watch the clip again
Reminders
Christmas Party
Monday 19th December, during the day.
More details to follow next week.
Morning drop off
Please can parents of all sessional children remember that during the morning drop off they must remain with their children until 9.30am.
What to wear
The weather for next week is looking crisp and a little chilly, so please do wrap your little ones up nice and warm. Check out our recommended winter kit list and remember to use your LFF discount codes.
Team Update
We're delighted to welcome a new member of our team into the forest next week. His name is Liam Bartlett and he's excited to be part of the Little Forest Folk team, Liam looks forward to meeting you all soon, but in the meantime here are some fun facts about Liam.
His favourite colour is green, his favourite food is a curry and Liam is the very proud owner of the highly coveted Blue Peter Badge!
On a sad note, both Karin and Mariana will be leaving our team at the end of the month due to relocating to the coast. We wish them all the very best for the future and we'll miss them both.
We'll be talking to parents about any key person transitions that will need to happen over the next week.
We hope you enjoy your weekend, have lots of fun on Bonfire Night, stay safe!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon