Woodland Corner: December 2023

Monday, 11 December 2023

WOODLAND CORNER: WINTER UPDATE

WOODLAND CORNER: WINTER UPDATE

The term has flown by and we can’t believe how quickly Christmas is approaching! We have welcomed several new children and families to Woodland Corner and all have settled in really well. Michelle is also now fully embedded in the team having started with us before the summer. We are so grateful for her years of nursery experience and for her transformation of the creative area, which is a hit with both the pre-schoolers and the extended schools children. We have loved seeing the wonderful artwork that has been made.

Speaking of art, Woodland Corner hosted its first ever art exhibition, Our Colourful World, over two days in November. Skymeadow Gallery exhibited a collection of beautiful paintings which, in addition to being brightly coloured, had a connection to Suffolk or East Anglia. On the Friday night, art lovers (aged 18 and over!) browsed while enjoying delicious wine from Nayland-based wine merchant Anglia Wines and we hosted child-friendly activities on the Saturday. The exhibition was a huge success and raised more than £800. We have already put some of the funds towards a giant easel so we can continue to stimulate creativity in all the children who attend our setting.

This term has been busy with other fundraising events, which are vital to us as a charity. We hosted a bake sale, a very successful stall at the Nayland bonfire and fireworks (the extended schools children also helped us to make the guy!) and a tombola at the Nayland Christmas Fayre. We have raised over £1,000 in total from these events and are so grateful to you and your families for your generosity and support.

We celebrated Halloween with a pumpkin volcano science experiment and spooky yoga. Yoga sessions are on Tuesdays and multi sports, run by Maxim Sports Coaching, is on Mondays. The children really enjoy both of these activities.

We have also focused on literacy and speech and language development this term. We read books such as The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Whatever Next! and acted them out with props. We celebrated nursery rhyme week and did an outing to the phone box to choose some new books, as well as hosting a maths week. While our outing to the war memorial was cancelled due to the terrible weather, we commemorated Remembrance Day, making a poppy wreath and explaining the significance of the event to the children.

The children will perform their Christmas songs next week at both the care home and the Nayland Church coffee morning. We are also getting ready for our Christmas party on December 20^{th _}the children are very excited to show their families the songs they have been practising so enthusiastically for weeks!

We have plenty to look forward to in the New Year, including putting a recent curriculum course into practice and developing Woodland Corner’s new website. We also plan for Laura to start hosting weekly forest school sessions. She is passing her training with flying colours and will start in March, when the weather is a bit warmer. More children will also join us from January and we are so busy that we are looking into doing an extension!