Wychall School Club, Bright Kids, Wigwam, Birmingham

Welcome Back to a New School Year at Wigwam, and what a fantastic start it's been! 💛

We’ve loved welcoming new children, reconnecting with familiar faces, and settling into routines with laughter and excitement. To start the term, we created our very own Treatment Agreement - setting out how we’ll treat each other, adults, and visitors with kindness and respect. Once complete, everyone proudly signed their name alongside Lily and Toni ✍️

Our creative streak has been in full swing this month 🎨
🍁 Leaf painting using balloons to create autumn-inspired prints
🦋 Our own - folding paper into butterflies, planes and roses
🟣 - decorating our hand outlines with colourful pom poms and finger-painted dots
🍝 Lasagne mosaic art - turning pasta sheets into textured masterpieces
💎 Bead pictures - gluing beads to make vibrant 3D artwork
🎨 Blow painting - using pipettes and straws to create unique, colourful designs

Our imaginative play has been just as wonderful - from setting up restaurants and classrooms to running our very own Wigwam Hair Salon! 💇‍♀️✂️ The children have also entered Young Artists Food Friends drawing competition, turning their favourite foods into fun characters and we’ve got our fingers crossed for a winner! 🤞

Looking ahead, we’re excited to take part in on 10th October 💚 In the lead-up, we’ll be fundraising through Guess the Sweets in the Jar and special activities to celebrate the importance of wellbeing 🧠

We hope everyone is enjoying their Summer Holiday ☀️ We thought whilst we're closed we could take a look back on earlier this year and what we got up to...

In June it was all about sunshine, laughter, and celebrating the children’s amazing achievements 🏆

With the warm weather blessing us, we spent many afternoons in the big playground – conquering the play fort, zipping down the slide, and swinging from the monkey bars. We even made our own kites from paper, lollipop sticks, and string, watching them dance in the summer breeze 🪁🛝

Of course, our crafty side shone too – from sewing colourful patterns with needle and thread to creating beautiful bead art in shapes like hearts and hot air balloons. Father’s Day brought with it a flurry of love as the children made heartfelt cards for their dads, grandads and other important males in their lives 💛

And what a joy it was to hear the children share their proudest moments from the year:
Bailey – “Getting through my football” ⚽
Nylah – “I moved up a book band” 📖
Macie – “I have learnt how to write my name” ✍️
Arla – “Doing my first drama show” ✍️

JULY ☀️

July has been packed with creativity, laughter, and a few tearful goodbyes as we wave off our wonderful Year 6 Leavers 👋

We kicked off the month with , where our young artists got stuck into all kinds of colourful, messy fun! From saltwater painting and spray-painted water lilies to handprint fruit art using paint and foam. One of our favourite moments was creating our vibrant ‘Summer 2025’ banner, featuring handprinted watermelons, pineapples and strawberries 🍉🍍🍓

We also marked with games and word searches, including guessing chocolate bars by their wrappers (yes, it made us all very hungry 🍫)

The sunshine returned just in time for some outdoor fun. We cooled off with water balloon fights and tried new games in the playground like the flipping cone challenge and team races 🌞

Then came the big countdown – the last 5 days of term! We held our very own mini sports day with relay races, a 3-legged race, beanbag and spoon dash, and the ever-popular Water Challenge where teamwork (and splashes) ruled the day 💦

We celebrated with Wychall’s Summer Fete and wrapped it all up with our own Summer Party – pizza baguettes, chocolate cornflake cakes and, of course, more water balloon fun to end the year with a splash!

But perhaps the most bittersweet part of July was saying goodbye to our brilliant Year 6 Leavers. Watching them grow has been a true joy and we’re so proud of everything they’ve achieved. Good luck on your new adventures – we’ll miss you, but we know you’ll shine ✨

Here’s to a joyful summer – full of rest, fun, sunshine (hopefully!) and memories in the making.

See you in September Wigwam! 🫶

✨ M A R C H ✨

At Wigwam, we welcomed in spring 🌼 with lots of fun activities and making the most of the sunshine ☀️ however long it lasts for. For most of our activities we brought out the pastel paints 🎨 colours to make some lovely water 💧 colour effects on things you see in spring, such as butterflies 🦋 flowers 🌺 bees 🐝 and rainbows 🌈 They all turned out so great and colourful with all the paints/colours mixed together. Next up was St Patrick’s Day ☘️ We did some St Patrick’s day themed activities which the children really enjoyed. The first was using green peppers 🫑 slicing them to make them look like shamrocks, painting one side green 💚 and stamping them on the paper. The second was using a cut out of a shamrock and using oil pastels to make and outline/shape out of it. For Red Nose Day ❤️ we did a fun game of pin the red nose of the face and whoever was closest, wins w 🏆 This game was so much fun 🤩 Then came the last week of March where we started our Mother’s Day activities. The children created a folded heart that open up into a flower 🌺 where they decorated the inside of the flower by either colouring in or using tissue paper to make it their own. We then got the clay out to make some mother’s day hearts but the clay was not really working in our favour as it just kept crumbling on us haha 😂 To end the week, we took the table outside in the sunshine ☀️ and did some painting 🎨 with of course, the pastel colours 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

🧪 S C I E N C E W E E K 🧪

To kick start science week we attempted to make slime with pva glue, slime activator, shaving foam and food colouring, it actually worked 🤩 Yay 👏🏼 The children loved it and even one child said 🗣️“this has been the best activity we’ve done.” On Tuesday, we recycled ♻️ one of our previous activities for this week as the children liked it last time, we did colour changing milk 🥛 it involved milk, food colouring, washing up liquid 🧼 and cotton pads. The children enjoyed watching 👀 the colours expand and mix together especially the younger ones. On Wednesday, the breakfast club children made the volcano 🌋 for the afternoon children to erupt. The children all worked together to make this, it looked so good 😍Then in that afternoon, the children took it turns to pour the ingredients in but said it smelt really bad 😷 Then on Thursday, the children made some sensory bottles that represented the different seasons, we decorated the bottles with its seasons colours and added baby oil, water 💧 food colouring and different arts and crafts materials. We watched the materials float around in the bottle, shaking them all around and then the children started to bottle flip them. We saved the best activity till the last and best day of the week- Friday. The children was so excited for this one… coke & mentos 🤩 All children enjoyed watching the coke all fizz up ⬆️ and explode 💥 To end science week, we all gathered round the seating area to watch 📺 Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs. What a fun way to end a busy and eventful week 🧫 🧬 🩷🩵

✨ F E B R U A R Y ✨

Feb has been a quiet one. It has been a bunch of highs ⬆️ and lows ⬇️ Overall everyone has had a great month 🥰 We made squishy hearts for Valentine’s Day 🩷 as well as creating an experiment with milk 🥛 and food colouring. After half term we also decided to attempt to make slime but we failed miserably 🤦🏼‍♀️ However all children had a great time playing around with it. Lots of selfies were taken as always 📸💛

As my last day at Wigwam comes to a close, I would like to thank all the children and families for making me feel welcome 🥰 I have had a great time here and have made many friends here. I am also very sad 😢 to leave however it’s time for me to move onto pastures new. I wish all the children the very best and thought I would share a few pictures over the year and half I have been here 📸 I will miss you all so much 🫂 Thank you so much for my cards, gifts and performances I will treasure them forever 🩷

Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 ✨💚

Monday: We printed off our faces 😊 and wrote lovely things around them about ourselves ✍🏼

Tuesday: We printed off Inside out 2 emotions and wrote round when we felt like they did 😊😔😡😕😩😬

Wednesday: Lily wrote our names in the centre of the piece of paper and we went round in a circle and other children wrote about each other 🩷

Thursday: We wrote all of our good/bad feelings on a plate to get all the feelings out in the open so they weren’t all in our head 🥰

Friday: Lily became a yoga 🧘🏼‍♀️ instructor for the afternoon. 10/10 for the instructing and 10/10 for all children participating 👏🏼

Doing these activities children have said they have felt relaxed ☺️ and it was so lovely for everyone to see how each other was feeling. All these activities along with some silly face selfies 📸 to make us feel better 😘 💚

January what a month ✨ We have all had so much fun and so much going on this month 🤩 From messy play to other good fun 🤍 Everyone has thoroughly enjoyed all activities this month. We have done an activity every day. The children have said the best activity was the baking the cake 🎂 for national chocolate cake day 🍫 and the flour activity created by Lil. All while this is going on we have created an oven out of crate and paper and also some menus for our roleplay kitchen 👩🏼‍🍳 We have had endless breakfasts and desserts playing kitchens with everyone. We have also had numerous telling’s off while the children have taken over the club for an afternoon 😂 School had a dress up who you want to be day and Arla came to us and said she wanted to be us so we created her a badge and she dressed up like us for the day 🩵 Arla also took part in responsibilities we both have, i.e. taking children to school. We can’t wait to see what February holds ✨🩷

Being a parent is the toughest job any of us will ever do 🧡 Whether you are co-parenting, single parenting, very young or an older parent, whatever your family looks like the struggles are the same. Here at Wigwam Bright Kids we acknowledge working, balancing many different pressures and finding time for yourself is a challenge. So today just take a deep breath, put the kettle 🫖 on and find 5 minutes to know.. you are enough, you are doing a good job and we see you 🙏🏻🌸❤️

Lauren and Lily would like to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year 🎄 Thank you for all support over the last year and cant wait to see you all in 2025 ✨💛

What a month ✨ We sure have had a blast 💥 Festivities carried on right the way through December till the last day. We have made Christmas crafts, danced round the room 🪩 played Christmas Pictionary/Hangman and so much more 🤩 Our Christmas party has been so much fun 🎉 Lauren and Lily cooked and prepared food. All children enjoyed the party and are worn out now 🎄❤️