Our children have had lots of lovely stories to share with us of decorating their Christmas trees at home with their families.  They decided that as we have our very own Cart Mill Christmas tree growing in our garden, we should decorate it!

After much discussion, we decided that we would make our decorations a little different using some of the beautiful pine cones that were kindly dontated to us. Of course at Cart Mill we do love a  little bit of sparkle, so out came the glue and glitter (sorry Michelle!)The children chose their own colour of glitter and ribbon and worked very hard to decorate their pine cones. We then had lots of fun hanging them on our tree. Doesn’t it look beautiful!

A few of our children chatted about the decorations they had outside our houses and some had “special things” on their front door. We had a look at some pictures and decided we would make our very own Cart Mill Christmas wreath.  We had a look around our garden and decided we really needed to collect some “interesting things” to put on our wreath. The children remembered we had seen some leaves and pine cones at our Forest School site so we decided we would go foraging to see what we could find!

The children excitedly changed into their Forest School waterproofs and wellies and we set off, we were so lucky that Val and Blue decided to come with us! Our children had lots of fun foraging and found some beautiful confier foliage, ivy, rosehip and holly.  This sparked lots of interesting discussion on how ivy grows up trees “to touch the sky” and that “holly is very jaggy so you have to be careful” and that “we must  not eat berries we find in the forest” and ” we need to wash our hands when we get back” Great work boys and girls!

We were so excited to start making our wreath. We have been learning about patterns in nature and the children carefully examined all of our leaves and pine cones and spotted lots of different patterns such as “spirals”, “jaggy bits round the edges, they look like triangles” and that our leaves “have lots of different lines on them” you are so clever boys and girls!

We decided to “stick” our different leaves to some cardboard to make our wreath. The children correctly identified we should make our wreath in the shape of a circle. We decided this should be an adult job (with the children giving me some advice on how I should hold my scissors and that I should be careful). We decided to try and stick our leaves with some glue. We were able to glue on our smaller leaves but we needed to do a bit of problem solving as our conifer foliage was  “too heavy and keeps falling off”. We decided we should try to staple on our leaves. We decided this was an adult job and that the children could help by “squashing down Fiona’s hand to make them stick”. The children chose where to place our leaves and of course they decided we must have some extra special sparkle and a great big bow! We had so much fun and our wreath will look fabulous on our outdoor stage.

Finally, yes it has been a very creative week in our garden, we decided to make one last decoration. Paper chains! The children demonstarted excellent team work, sharing and fine motor skills in threading our strips of paper, glueing them together and making sure everyone had a turn. Our children were so clever to identify their own patterns by using different colours in sequence.  We decided to see how long we could make our chain and to see if it would stretch all the way along our garden. Our children proudly held onto their chain and they counted that it was 28 children long! Amazing work boys and girls.

We would love you to share any Christmas decorations you have made at home with us.