Simple is best!

Our fab mud kitchen built by Martin & Adam last year.

The past month has been unseasonably dry & warm, the children have been fine in their poloshirts or jumpers & haven't needed coats at all. It has also allowed them to fully explore the playground, sometimes if it is very wet early on, we find the children are reluctant to wear the rain gear & stay under the verandah area. They have had such great fun in the mud kitchen & it's been so dry they haven't even needed rain gear on, just their wellies. This has made me realise that a canopy over the mud kitchen would make such a big difference, so this is on my list of things to do in the next 6 months or so. You can read about how we got such a brilliant mud kitchen over here.

It is incredible how the children just naturally incorporate the many loose parts around the forest area in their play - the long pinecones have become sausages, the glittery gumballs are decorations for cakes. They have all really enjoyed using the 3 willow dens too, they have become their houses, some girls have even added more branches & planks to decorate them. 

I loved that these 2 children decided to cook on a fire in their house!

Who knew a couple of years ago when our grass wore away in a particularly wet Autumn that having to put down bark chippings would prove to one of the best decisions we ever made!

A cake with lots of decorations on the top!

Outdoor Play Party - settling in to nursery.

The children have now been in nursery for almost 4 weeks & most are well settled & enjoying exploring the outdoor areas at school. They were very excited to go on a visit to Bear Woods for the first time this week too. Even though we know the children loved this space last year, we still worried whether another class would find it just as exciting but we shouldn't have worried! They all got on their rain gear & had so much fun playing on the grassy slope & having a picnic for snack time. It was very interesting to watch how unsure many of the children were walking on a slope & around the various tree stumps & branches lying around on the grass, not to mention the long grass. Once again we were reminded of how invaluable this whole experience is for the children as they develop their vestibular system in readiness for a more sedentary experience next year.

I can't believe how tall some of the alder trees are in just 18 months - some are bigger than me (5 foot 10) & yet were below my knee when planted. It was lovely to see some berries on the guelder rose & catkins on the alder, you can really see seasonal changes in this space. 

They were great at gathering loads of grass to bring back down the guinea-pigs - we plan to bring them up with us next week so they can trim some of the long grass for us!

The 2 groups go together next week for the first time & it'll be interesting to see how the play changes in a bigger group as they both have very different ways of playing at the moment. The 1st group love to make dens with planks & sticks in the forest area while the 2nd group love to play at being super heroes!

The past few weeks have proved that most children are happiest outside & they don't need lots of expensive resources to have fun.

This post from Wild Family Fun was my favourite from the last OPP, it sounded like my idea of perfect day too & I like to think we recreate a little bit of this in Bear Woods.

Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!

We'd appreciate it if you included a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! In return, we'll gladly further share your post on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest. Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back. Please note that by contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished if featured.(If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.) Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week!

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Preparing for a visit to Bear Woods.

Peter from An Creagan made this sign for us.

From experience it is best to plan well ahead before any visits to new & unfamiliar places with young children. This year I have a bigger class than usual, 28 as opposed to 26 and in that class there are several children with additional needs & others who speak little or no English. Therefore I can't just spring surprises on them & expect no tantrums or upsets. For the past 3 weeks they have had enough new experiences thrown at them almost every day & we have tried from around the 3rd day to have a very set routine for them to begin to understand the flow of their day. (At the moment their day is only for a 2 hour session) The basic routine is outdoor play, indoor play, tidy up time, story & then home. Some are still struggling to grasp this routine & the 2 hours is too much for others & their session has been shortened by 30-15 minutes. I would much rather a child went home 30 minutes earlier but happy than stayed the 2 hours but was crying or unsettled towards the end. 

This week I began to talk about Bear Woods, this is our little wild area within the school grounds that is planted with alder, guilder rose, rowan & birch trees. Last year we used this area on a weekly basis & we were amazed at how much the children enjoyed & looked forward to their time in this tiny fenced off area. It really proved to us, the adults, that children don't need vast forest areas or loads of resources to enjoy being outside in a natural environment. We can see the area from the playground, I talked about how we would walk up the hill to get there & that they could run ahead but must stop at the red circle on the fence. Some enjoyed looking at the red circle from the top of the slide. I talked about they must never open the gate - that's a job for grown ups!

Running up the hill towards the red circle on the gate.

I also brought a set of rain gear (our waterproof coats & dungarees) into the story room so they could see what they will wear, with several children with sensory issues I was very concerned that this may be a big issue for them, many children with sensory issues hate the sound & feel of the rain gear. The next day most couldn't wait to get trying on the rain gear for themselves & many have put it on every day since. 

However, I forgot that 3 & 4 year olds don't really understand the concept of next week & after the first day of talking about going to Bear Woods, several arrived in the following morning all excited & ready to go there & then! So that day I drew the number of 'sleeps' until we go on the whiteboard in the story room & each day we rub another sleep off until they will begin to see the actual day getting closer!

A small sloping piece of grass dotted with saplings - but guess what to 3 & 4 year olds it quickly became 'Bear Woods'!

We plan to go up to Bear Woods every Wednesday & it will be perfect to have 2 weeks to explore the space in the smaller groups of 15 & 13 before the whole class begins to go there. 

I hope that this year the class enjoy this small space as much as the children did last year, it never ceased to amaze us each week how excited & happy they were to go there. It also proved to us that children don't need loads of fancy resources to have fun! It also was a great reminder to us, the adults, how trees help to make the seasons even more noticeable.

 

A Guelder Rose in flower in spring.

The alder trees had lots of caterpillars last September.
 

 

 

What did you do at school today?

For many parents a child starting nursery or preschool is the first time their child has been out of their care & been under the influence of another adult. It can be very hard for some parents to 'lose' their child for a part of the day, especially if they have been at home with their child for the past 3-4 years - it must be quite lonely. So it stands to reason that most will ask their child at pick up time - 'What did you do today?'. They want to know what their child has been doing in nursery without them. Most young children will reply "nothing" or "played" and this has to be frustrating for the parent who really wants a blow by blow account of what has happened from they left the child until they pick them up again. 
So,  I thought it would be helpful for parents to see all the skills the children have already learnt in the past two weeks. This is what your child has been doing in school for the past 10 days, they have learned some if not all of the following: 

To say goodbye to their parent/carer & trust they will come back at home time.

To walk through an inticing classroom, full of toys & head out into the playground.

To wash their hands & get a 'ticket' for snack.

To use the pointed end of a straw to pierce the hole in the milk carton.

To put the empty cup or carton into a blue tray.

To wear an apron when playing at the water or painting.

To label their own art work.

To take turns using the sand timers.

To try & take off their own shoes & put on their welly boots & vice versa.

To try & take off their own jumpers & put them back on again.

To tidy up the classroom.

To be part of a group of 15 or 13. 

To listen to a short story.
To begin to understand that when they need an adult they will have to wait.
To follow a group instruction - when the teacher says 'Time to go into the storyroom' - they know to all head off into the room together. **this is one that takes the most time for all children to grasp.
To sit on a seat in the storyroom without bouncing! 
To wait for their name to be called before going out fo the storyroom at home time.
To move their picture to the right to self register & to the left to show they are going home.
To only take 1 sweet out of a box of lots of sweets on a Friday.
To play with sticks & how not to point them at eyes!

The tickets needed for snack.

The ticket has to go in the box on the snack table.

 It is actually quite incredible when you see the list to see all they have accomplished in just 10 days & I'm sure I'll think of other skills when I've published this post!

Outdoor Play party - Alfreton N.S - Forest school sites.

Fab little mud kitchen in Granny Greenwood's Garden.

During our 3 day visit to Derby we were lucky enough to spend a whole day at the incredibly inspiring Alfreton Nursery School. I have already written posts on their indoor & outdoor space but their forest school sites - yes that is plural - need a separate post altogether.
Alfreton Nursery first established a separate site to offer a forest school experience within their school grounds, they fenced off an area & called it 'Granny Greenwood's Garden' - they have a puppet called Granny Greenwood who lives in there. The site is only 8 years old but it feels so much older & is well established with a willow tunnel & cave, over 50 silver birch trees, some fruit trees, meandering paths, a seating area & bug wall.
This space felt so established & there was so much evidence of it being well used by the children, with a lovely rough mud kitchen in sight & lots of little piles of leaves & bark chipping dotted around.
The nursery use this space in their first few terms at school with focussed forest school sessions. It really feels like it is much further away from the main playground than it actually is. 

The bug wall.

Little dens tucked away.

Hard to believe this site is only 8 years old.

Ugly fencing is screened off.

Then when they are more confident they progress onto the much bigger woodland site the nursery has established in the past 18 months. This site was gained from some green space owned by the local secondary school & is a little further away from the main playground but all still within walking distance. Again, it was hard to believe this was only 18 months old as again the trees looked so established. I think the large patches of wild grasses & floweres helped it look so inviting too. Within this site, they have a brilliant plastic bottle green house with loads of little plants all thriving away inside. 

Built on a Saturday morning by staff, governors & parents.

There are bug houses, willow dens & a fire circle. Recently the parents, staff & governors came together to build a polytunnel with a view to creating a big greenhouse but then discovered that it was too hard to get water to this facility. So now the plan is to make into a big den for the children to enjoy with camouflage netting etc. 

A much bigger space.

Seeing both these sites was a brilliant experience for us all - our little wooded area is so much smaller but I was able to get lots of ideas to take back to help make Bear Woods an even more inviting space - like creating bark chipping paths through the trees & grass. For one of my colleagues it was inspiring for her to see what can be done with a blank green space in a small matter of time.

If I took one thing away from my time in Derby visiting the various schools, it was to try & create as much of a wild area within school grounds as you can & that it is possible to achieve it in a short space of time. I was so glad that we had already taken a step in the right direction with planting our woodland areas in 2013.

If you would like to read more about Alfreton Nursery School, please check out this case study.

Once again thanks to Peter, Nicola & Angela for all their patience with our many questions!

Many thanks to all those linked up & supported the last Outdoor Play Party, it's always brilliant to see so many post about enjoying the outdoors. My favourite from last time was from Mum in Search on how she & her children had taken part in a tree planting activity & on revisiting 2 years later, the children were excited to discover they had created a little piece of bush! This post reminded of how amazing it has been to have our own woodland area developing over the past 18 months. I can't wait to see it as it matures like the sites at Alfreton.

Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!

We'd appreciate it if you included a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! In return, we'll gladly further share your post on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest. Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back. Please note that by contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished if featured.(If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.) Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week!

 

An InLinkz Link-up

Exploring the outdoors.

Den building.

A whole new class started this week at Windmill in the nursery class, there will be 28 in the class but so far 25 have started with the final 3 joining next week. 
The weather has been typical for going back to school - sunny & warm! This has been perfect for allowing a whole new set of children to explore the playground. From Wednesday we started our day outdoors & after a few tantrums about wanting to be inside first by Friday all the children had no problem just going outside straight away.

The children have loved exploring the mud kitchen that we were fortunate to have built by Martin from Highway Farm Activity Centre & Adam, one of our dads last year. You can more about that here. It has been lovely to watch them using the bark chippings, leaves & pine cones to 'make' ice-cream, chocolate cake & pasta. 

A feast being prepared in the mud kitchen.

I got some help to trim the willow dens & some of the branches were left behind to create a forest feel to the bark chip area & then on one of the days 2 girls spent the morning putting the cut branches back into the dens & they added sticks & planks, they said they were like the little pigs!

The class also embraced the Bottle Babies into their play with little or no prompting - they became babies in the prams, ice-cream, drinks & sauces for their cooking in the mud kitchen.

A shop full of ice-cream waiting to be bought.

The best thing so far has been that all the parents have really bought into our outdoor play approach & really seem to appreciate how the playground works & how it enables the children to begin to embrace risky play& the value of loose parts for imaginative play. So here's to a whole new year of outdoor play the Windmill way!