Season’s Greetings from Footsteps
As we come to the end of a very busy term, our festive preparations have been in full swing – and it has been truly magical!
Christmas is fast approaching and we have been learning all about our different traditions through fantastic shared experiences. With themed arts and crafts, Forest School sessions, songs and festive food, we are full of Christmas spirit!
Christmas Jumper Day for Save the Children
On the 8th December the children are encouraged to dress up and get into the festive mood in order to raise money for important charities. We donned our favourite fancy dress outfit, Christmas jumpers and even favourite onesies. We enjoyed a day of amazing activities. A huge thanks to all our families for their donations to Save The Children – we really appreciate your support!
Yule love all that’s on offer!
It’s impossible to sum up just how many awesome experiences our fabulous team have created for our children to enjoy. We’ve made reindeer food, decorated Christmas trees, and made ornaments from natural resources in Forest School. We’ve baked Christmas biscuits, made glittery playdough and rescued small world play figures from ice. We’ve bought the outside in with foam and flour messy play, made mince pies and coloured in giant gingerbread men. We’ve opened advent calendars, shared birthdays and written letters to Santa. There’s been reading, listening, climbing, running, weighing, measuring, comparing, making, learning and having fun with our friends.
We can’t forget some very naughty visitors to some of our Footsteps sites too. Those cheeky Elves have been up to all sorts!!
Dreaming of a white Christmas
There’s snow activity our children love more than getting to play outside. And the weather certainly delivered this December with a fresh dump of snow. We wrapped up in coats, gloves and hats and headed out to enjoy it! We made snowmen, snow angels, went sledging and enjoyed a snowball fight or 2 as well. But just to run around and let off energy with the snow under our feet was enough! We loved going on some beautiful wintery walks and seeing how the snow and frost changed our environment.
Rocking around the Christmas tree
Jingle bells all the way as we enjoyed some of our favourite carols and put on some incredible nativity performances. It was a pleasure and a privilege to share these with our families. We were so proud of all the children and it really was the best way to get us into the festive spirit. We had some fabulous Christmas parties with our parents too – sharing party food and lots of Christmas cheer.
Happy Hanukkah!
We love to learn all about different faiths and traditions and it was lovely for our children to share all about theirs as we celebrated Hanukkah. Having told us all about their special candles at home, we set to work crafting our very own Menorah candles. We had lots of lovely discussions about their meaning, why there were 9 branches and read a wonderful Jewish story to put it into context.
Santa’s coming to town
We had a very special visitor come and see all the Footsteps Children. He made quite the mess for our poor staff to clear up with snowy boot prints and carrots from the reindeer left behind. All is forgiven though as the children were thrilled with their gifts! It is wonderful to see their imagination lit up with wonder and excitement! We appreciate everyone “involved” in creating these magical experiences – and to those behind the scenes helping with some creative photoshop work!
A huge thankyou to all of our children, our families and not forgetting our amazing staff who put so much of themselves into making these experiences for our children. Their creativity, compassion, passion and fun astounds us every day.
On behalf of all the teams at Footsteps, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
