This week, we explored the sense of touch as our focus. From feeling different textures, to engaging in hands-on forest activities, the children discovered new ways to describe and experience the world around them. It’s been an incredible journey of exploration, creativity, and teamwork!

Our current fortnightly learning intention has been Literacy and Physical Development, filling the week with exciting opportunities for fun muddy active learning and plenty of story times 📚

This week has been so fun! We’ve enjoyed the milder weather and the chance to welcome some new children and parents into our forest. It has been great showing them the space and introducing them to the team and our little adventurers!

This week, we continued our "All Around Me" theme, soaking up the glorious winter sunshine while diving into exciting learning adventures.

“One small step for a Little Forest Folk-er, one giant leap for all Little Forest Folk-ers”.

Thankfully we were back on camp for the whole of this week, as the frosts subsided and turned the ground into squishy, slushy, satisfying mud - our favourite! 

This week has been full of inspiring and exciting play. 

There is not only the forest floor for our Little Forest Folk-ers to explore, this week we have been looking up into the tree canopy on a bird watch. Clipboards and binoculars at the ready, we set off looking for birds. We had some images of local birds that we could tick off when we saw them and we discovered that the most common bird visiting our forest was the gorgeous Robin.

This week, the frosty mornings have added a magical touch to our forest adventures, and we’ve been staying active to keep warm! The children loved chasing the sun across the meadow and playing our favourite action game, “Walking in the Forest.” With songs and creative actions, our little adventurers have turned it into a lively and imaginative activity.  

So we have returned after our amazing Christmas break away from the forest. As much as we enjoyed spending time with our loved ones and getting over the excitement of Christmas, we have all very much looked forward to coming back into the forest and sharing all our interesting stories with each other and finding out what our lovely little ones have been up to. 

The current education system is too focussed on qualifications at the expense of broader aims. 94% of respondents favour urgent complete or partial reform of GCSEs. (HMC report)

This week our management team at Little Forest Folk attended a lecture by Simon Sinek called ‘The Infinite Game’. Simon Sinek is an organisational consultant who gives inspiring and motivational talks on a subject dear to our hearts – leadership. 

It’s a challenging thing in today’s society to trust your children to develop when they are ready. Amidst NCT groups there is always much talk about when a baby starts walking, when they are potty trained, with some families feeling the pressure to achieve a goal by a certain age or time, rather than when the child is developmentally ready.

Today is my son’s last day at Little Forest Folk. He will be returning for holiday camps but today is his last official day as a daily member of the nursery community. 

You may have seen that Little Forest Folk Chiswick recently had an Ofsted inspection, grading us as Outstanding, in which the inspector commented ‘Children thrive in this nursery. They gain a superb understanding of early literacy and mathematical skills’.

We are so fortunate in our forest nurseries to have a high adult to child ratio that allows us to fully embrace ‘in the moment’ planning.

Today is a bitter sweet day for me. It’s my last baby’s first day in the forest. It’s a good reminder of how difficult settling in can be. Not for the children but for the parents.

There’s a saying that a goldfish will only grow to the size of the bowl it is confined to, whereas a fish in the ocean surrounded by space, freedom and the wonders of the natural world can grow to its full capacity.

As part of a recent parent survey, we asked parents if they could change one thing about Little Forest Folk, what would it be? The vast majority responded ‘nothing’, which is always lovely to hear.

There were however a small group of parents who responded with ‘do some learning’.

Following the announcement of our Queen’s award in April, we are delighted to share an article written about Little Forest Folk by a journalist who visited us in May.

Following our being selected by Tatler as being one of the finest nurseries in the nation last month, we are now delighted to share with you an article written about Little Forest Folk by a journalist who visited us in our Wimbledon setting a few weeks ago.

Well, this weekend was the long awaited Nursery World Awards! It was a fabulous event and we were delighted to be recognised in such a large industry such as the early years to be one of the industry leaders.

‘Wouldn’t we all secretly like to be Little Forest Folk?' We are incredibly excited and proud to be included once again in the prestigious annual Tatler Nurseries Guide.

We have some exciting news to share with you. It’s been difficult to keep quiet about this achievement as we were inspected just over 10 days ago at Little Forest Folk Fulham…

We are delighted to have won the Nursery World Awards 2016 award for Online and Social Media. We see our website and social media as more than an opportunity to tell parents about our setting...

We are delighted to announce details of our third Little Forest Folk site....

From October our fantastic team will be bringing our magical experience to Fulham. Our children will spend all day playing in the beauty and wonder that is Fulham Palace Gardens. 

We are delighted to have been recognised by Tatler as one of the 'finest nurseries in the nation' in 'The Tatler Nurseries Guide 2016'