Two happy Goodym Sara(h)s spent a solid hour and a half on at the Toy Library on Thursday evening, weeding the adventure playground and the carpark. Braving the hot weather and making every effort to stay hydrated, they cut back the rapidly growing bindweed, pulled up errant thistles and chopped up various bits of dead undergrowth in the newly renovated adventure playground, making sure to get rid of anything spiky or stinging that could potentially hurt the Toy Library's intrepid little customers. So busy they were, that they forgot to take any photos of their progress, hence the stock gardening tools image on this report!

Having been renovated over the first few months of this year, and opened in May, the adventure playground is already proving a huge hit with our local youngsters. Not only that, but Helen from the Toy Library was absolutely delighted when the official adventure playground inspector (yes, this is an Actual Job) expressed his admiration for how much work has been done to renovate the space. Apparently, the UK is short of 300 playground spaces, and in reclaiming and sprucing up the one behind the Toy Library, we have brought a much-needed one back to life! So, Goodgymmers across the country - only 299 more to go! Helen, ably aided by her family, has of course done much of this work herself, but is enormously gracious in her gratitude to Goodgym Waltham Forest for the time we have given her to assist in this very big task. The playground is a really wonderful addition to our community facilities, and GGWF will most certainly stand by to do anything else we can to help!

Three brilliant GGWF Goodgymmers (Sara, Matiyas and Lily) took part in our monthly Toy Library mission and gave Helen some much-needed help clearing out the construction toy store. As always, GGWF's organizational wizardry left Helen delighted with a job very well done. In fact, she's so pleased, that she'd love for GGWF to help with the clearing of the adventure playgroud, which has just begun. Tasks will be on Saturdays, during the day, and will be pretty physical, so get ready for a good workout! Watch this space for listings :-)

Four enthusiastic Waltham Forest Goodgymmers (Lily, Matiyas, Sara and Sarah) met at the Toy Library this evening for our first task of 2026, helping Helen with a few odd jobs she'd kindly saved for us! Matiyas proved himself to be quite the handyman with some toy and furniture repairs, while Lily, Sara and Sarah did some toy cleaning, sorted and categorised some cuddly friends for storage, and organised some lovely donations received for the SEND toy library, a fantastic new resource for our local community, which is due to open very soon. As ever, Helen was delighted to have some extra help, and it was great to get the new year started for Goodgym WF. A big welcome and well done to Matiyas and Sara who were attending their first Goodgym missions - it was lovely to have you on board!

From February, our Toy Library sessions will be on the second Thursday of each month at 6:30pm, meeting at the task. Come and join us - the more the merrier!