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!