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Our week in the forest
Greetings forest friends,
🌲🌳 We hope this newsletter finds you well, this week, we embarked on a journey of joy and connection with our Stay and Play Week, where parents and carers came to visit our lovely forest and immersed themselves in the wonders of nature and free play. Let's dive into the highlights of this enchanting adventure!
This week we have been fostering a love of reading here at Little Forest Folk Fulham, creating some engaging reading corners and basing our forest set ups around some popular children’s literature 📚
Mechanic Workshop Adventures
One of the highlights of the week was the child-led imaginative play in our mechanic workshop. Using old trolley wheels and their trusty toolkits, the children transformed into mechanics, fixing up cars and trucks with gusto.
This week, the forest was buzzing with the sound of tools as we focused on practical work. Various items, including wagons and wheelbarrows, needed some careful attention from little hands.
We have had another lovely week of forest fun here at Wimbledon Village!
After the long weekend what a sunny and fantastic week we had in forest! ☀️🌳🌼🌸
This week we have been absolutely blessed by the glorious sunshine. We have ensured there’s been plenty of sun cream applications and changes into shorts/sun caps when it’s been particularly bright We have also had the paddling pool back out for the first time this year, a great indicator of the start of months full of fun-in-the-sun!️
This week the team have been focusing on one of our core eco-schools values by reusing waste materials to create new products. From brave knights to beautiful butterflies and ladybugs, the children have loved getting into character with cardboard swords, shields and wings which they have decorated themselves and played with throughout the week.
Our Vision
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)
In these unprecedented times, we are currently no longer able to offer the majority of our children their usual outdoor, nature and creativity immersed learning environments.
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’.
Read more about our vision
Featured
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.
We’ve been bursting with excitement and now that it’s the Queen’s birthday and the official announcement day, we are absolutely delighted to finally share with you the news that Little Forest Folk has been given the royal seal of approval.
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.
Due to demand we thought it may be useful for us to share our current availability across all our sites (Barnes, Chiswick, Fulham, Wandsworth, and Wimbledon).
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'