We certainly had a magical week in which we worked on building our community spirit, including a warm welcome from our regulars to our new visitors joining us for holiday camp sessions - it was great to have some familiar faces return and there was a huge variety of play and conversation on camp all week.
While we think about friendship and how we work and play together, we went on many an adventure walk as a group, exploring corners of the common that we haven't visited for a while and foraging for plentiful materials that we used to make natural paints, as well as bramble bead necklaces, bracelets - and even, snakes! The children enjoyed feeling the textures and qualities of only natural materials - even down to the tools they used, which were made of wood, ceramic and granite. We completed the cycle of reduce, reuse and recycle by painting onto discarded cardboard packaging using the paints that children had made by grinding up foraged chalk from the Surrey hills, charcoal, gorse flowers, weeds and spices.
The children were also keen to contribute to the community of Wimbledon by carrying out an epic litter pick on one of our adventure walks. They helped the rangers, dog owners, walkers and groundskeepers and had their eagle eyes on the lookout for any rubbish, which they dispensed with using telescopic litter pickers to safely reach into brambles and bushes. Not only did we discuss why litter is damaging to the environment, especially the animals we know and love to see and hear in the forest, the children also flexed their fingers and arms, while working on their hand eye coordination to carefully extract the offending articles.
It has been a lovely, peaceful and friendly week among our Little Forest Folk Wimbledon Village community. We hope you have an equally wonderful weekend and look forward to the return of our sessional buddies next week!
Little Forest Folk
Wimbledon Village