by Lucy Owen-Collins MBE, Bee in the Woods Kindergartens
Why the best gifts of childhood can’t be wrapped
At this time of year, it’s easy to get caught up in the pressure to buy more and do more. There are present lists, gift guides, stocking fillers and a steady stream of Instagram stories telling us what our children need to make the season more magical.
But when we think back to the things we loved most about our own childhood, I wonder how many of them came from a shop?
Perhaps it was walking home in the dark and seeing everyone’s Christmas lights. Making something at the kitchen table. The smell of something baking. Building a den. Staying in pyjamas all day. Or simply having the people we loved around us with nowhere else they needed to be.
The things that make childhood rich are often very simple: time, play, connection and a little bit of wonder.
The gift of time
Children live in a busy world. Nursery or school, clubs, appointments, errands and the everyday rush of getting everyone where they need to be. The festive season can easily add another layer of busyness.
Yet children need time that isn’t organised for them. Time to become absorbed in something, to follow an idea, to get bored and work out what to do next. Play doesn’t always happen instantly. Sometimes children need to potter for a while before the really interesting stuff begins.
The winter holidays can offer a rare opportunity to slow the rhythm of family life. We don’t necessarily need to fill that space. A morning with nowhere to be can be a gift in itself.
The gift of play
It is tempting to think that good play requires good toys. In reality, children are remarkably good at finding fun play in ordinary things.
A cardboard box can become a sleigh, a house or a spaceship. Sticks can become a campfire, tiny people or ingredients for woodland soup.
Blankets over the table become a den. Mud, water, stones, pinecones and leaves offer possibilities that no adult has predetermined.
This kind of open-ended play matters because the child, rather than the toy, has to provide the ideas.
That doesn’t mean toys are bad, of course. There is something wonderful about choosing a present you know a child will love. But perhaps alongside asking, “What can I buy them?” , we can also ask, “What might give them more opportunities to play?”
Sometimes the answer is simply time, space and permission to make a mess.
The gift of nature
Winter can make getting outdoors feel like more of an effort. There are coats to find, gloves that mysteriously disappear and somebody will almost certainly announce that they need the toilet just as everyone is finally ready.
But once we get outside, winter has its own kind of magic.
Puddles become ice. Breath turns to clouds. Bare trees reveal nests hidden all summer. Mud freezes and crunches beneath our feet. There are tracks to discover, berries to spot and, if we are lucky, frost or snow to transform a familiar place completely.
Children notice these tiny seasonal changes when we give them time to look.
Outdoor adventures don’t have to be elaborate either.
A ten-minute torch walk after tea can feel enormously exciting to a four-year-old. So can drinking hot chocolate outside, jumping in puddles or visiting the same tree each week to see what has changed.
The important thing isn’t how far we go. It is that we go together.
The gift of connection
Perhaps this is the one children need most.
Connection happens in small moments: stirring a cake mixture together, reading the same story for the hundredth time, collecting sticks, chatting on a walk or listening properly to a very long explanation about a particularly interesting stone.
Through these ordinary moments, children build their sense of belonging, security and confidence.
And connection is not only between people. Childhood is also a time when relationships with places are formed. The woods we visit again and again, the park where we know the best climbing tree, the beach where we collect treasures. Familiar places with people we love become woven into our memories.
A little winter wonder
If you’re looking for things to do together this winter, they needn’t cost very much at all.
Make natural decorations. Collect fallen twigs, pinecones, seed heads and leaves and turn them into stars, wreaths, garlands or decorations.
Go on a winter treasure hunt. Can you find something prickly, something smooth, something red, something tiny, something that smells interesting and something an animal might eat?
Take a torch walk. Explore somewhere familiar after dark. Notice how different everything feels and listen for sounds you might miss during the day.
Make a winter potion. A bowl, water and a wooden spoon are all you need. Add leaves, mud, herbs, sticks or anything else children discover outside. There is no correct recipe.
Start a tiny winter tradition
A Boxing Day walk, hot chocolate outdoors, making decorations from nature or an annual torch walk.
Traditions don’t have to be grand to become precious.
The festive season with children can come with a great deal of pressure to make everything magical. But perhaps we don’t need to manufacture quite so much magic for them.
Children are very good at finding it for themselves.
It is there in the frozen puddle, the cardboard box, the flickering fire, the stick that becomes a wand and the familiar hand tucked into theirs on a cold winter walk.
This season, alongside the presents we wrap, perhaps we can leave a little more space for the things that can’t be wrapped at all.
Time. Play. Nature. Connection. They might just be the gifts our children remember.
Bee in the Woods Kindergarten is a woodland preschool and community Forest School for three to seven year olds, based in Portslade and Stanmer Park in Brighton.
For more information www.beeinthewoods.co.uk
