Derby Road trip - Day 2, Little Explorers, Broomfield.

Over 2 days we (myself, Julia & Marian - 2 nursery school principals) visited 4 different settings - 3 nursery schools & one private day nursery. To say I took a lot of of photos at each place is an understatement, hence each place needs it's own post and because we spent a whole day at Alfreton, it gets 3 posts!

Marian, Kate, me & Julia.

Little Explorers is a 54 place private day nursery set in the grounds of Broomfield Hall, Derby College's argricultural campus. The nursery has use of the amazing grounds for the children who attend the nursery & Kate was good enough to spend an hour or so showing us around the site, we were also lucky enough to have a fabulous child guide, Oliver, who gave us an idea of how the various areas are used by the children.

I was amazed at the sheer area the nursery has access to, even the little shaded wooded area just outside the building was a great site to be able to use on a daily basis & from the various resources dotted around this space it was obviously in use by the children. Kate, aims to gradually phase out all the plastic resources that the nursery have accumulated but has found that when set out in this wooded area they seem less bright & obtrusive than when in the smaller playground space. I always worry when settings decide to go down one particular route & throw out perfectly good resources just because they don't 'fit' in with the latest philosophy, I would much rather they, like Little Explorers, found another purpose or place for them. At the moment natural resources are all very much the thing to have in every setting, and I agree they are much more aesthetically pleasing but not at the expense of throwing out perfectly good plastic resources that still serve a purpose.
It was brilliant to see a child made obstacle course set up amongst the trees using tree stumps, logs & plastic crates from a well known shop!

This are is just outside the more traditional playground.

The nursery uses 2 main sites for their forest school experiences & both were well used & established sites but felt very different, the first was more manufactured with willow dens & concrete seating areas whereas the other site was much more natural & organic. The willow den in the former was one of the biggest I have even seen & I could just imagine being in there on a wet day! The nursery is lucky to have lots of students on hand to make seats out of logs etc. & it means that as the seats break down, they are replaced regularly.

Oliver, our child guide, was delighted to have visitors to show off his 'forest' to & he enjoyed telling us what might happen at each area - this is where we make dens, climb trees, go over the logs etc. and most endearingly he kept asking us 'You do like this a lot don't you?' and of course we did, the sites were amazing.

My favourite area was the real foresty bit that the older children use on a daily basis, there was lots of evidence of play - wooden discs with clay & twigs that had been Gruffalo cake, lots of dens & sticks arranged in piles. It was refreshing to see nettles & holly & prickly bushes, as sometimes sites created for use by schools can be too sanitised. I feel it is much better that children learn all about these natural hazards first hand than being shocked when they do encounter them. In my experience a child stung by nettles cries a lot less than one who have fallen hard onto tarmac.
The children at Little Explorers had been having fun using an old hand drill that one of the staff had brought in from home the day before & you can read their post about this activity here.

We spent a lovely hour or so wondering around this incredible site, it was so relaxed & as Kate said, all the staff & children are much happier in this natural environment. I can see that Kate & her team have lots of ideas for making even more use of the fabulous space around them & I honestly would say that they have a unique selling point for their day nursery with all the access to woodland. If I had any advice for them it would be to actually make the break away from their more traditional indoor spaces & go down the outdoor kindergarten route.

Thanks again to Peter for setting up this opportunity & to Kate & Oliver for their time & enthusiasm.

Derby Road trip - day 1 - Alfreton N.S, outdoors.

This can be read alone or alongside this post on the amazing indoor learning environment at Alfreton N.S.

The wooden gates can be closed off.

If I had been impressed by the indoor space at Alfreton Nursery I think my jaw really did hit the floor when I stepped outside! This incredible school has one of the best outdoor spaces I have ever seen, it is broken into so many different little areas, a child must feel as if they are at an adventure park. Once again, they cleverly use items to close off areas between use e.g. a wooden planter closed off the slide area when not in use.
In the outdoor space they have numerous shelters dotted around the place, some planted like willow dens or others are wooden, some were even movable willow arches. I always like to try & create quiet areas within the larger, noisy outdoor space & this is exactly what they have done so successfully at Alfreton. There were so many opportunities for children to be in smaller groups amongst the larger group - at most times there are up to 52 children in the school at one time & yet it never felt that way. I saw little groups of children playing with each other in the mud kitchen area, inside the grass tunnel, the willow dens & just sitting on the grass chatting with the adults.

They have a gorgeous sand pit/construction area just outside the main exit & we got to see in use throughout the day & how the adults set it up for play as well. It was great to see the 'H' crates in action in another school, as the green crates we have at Windmill have become known to the wider school audience. Once again the pile of crates was set up beautifully before each play session to entice the children to engage with the various items. 

Area just for bike play

There is a completely separate bike area so that this play does not dominate other areas of the playground. Again, the high staffing level allows them the luxury to have such diverse areas where one adult can be with the bike area whilst several others can be dotted around the rest of the outdoor area. They even have an outdoor Atelier space on the grass & with important developments planned for this area in the new school year, I can't wait to see what becomes of this space.

Large outdoor transient art.

Like some of the other schools we visited Alfreton has an outdoor sound system to allow the children to enjoy some dancing outdoors, even when this was on it didn't impinge on any of the other quieter areas. Throughout the day I saw children put on the music & perform to little groups, some used cheerleading pom poms, others had on super hero capes & others just enjoying playing with the music on in the background.

The best part of exploring this incredible space was that I got to see so many Cosy Direct products in action, it is hard to sometimes tell how useful something is going to be from looking at it in a catalogue, so this was even better than going to an exhibition. 

As you enjoy looking at all these photos, I want you to bear in mind that there are also not one but two Forest school sites within the school grounds!! Yes, that's right 2 Forest school sites, I feel that they deserve their own post!
Once again, Angela & her team has used every inch of space & are not precious about it looking pristine - it looks so lived in & well used. You can tell when people are serious about outdoor play when there are waterproofs & wellies for everyone, not just the children.

 

If you ever get the opportunity to visit this amazing school, grab it. I promise you will come away with loads of ideas of how to enhance your own outdoor space.

Thanks again to all the Alfreton Team for their patience at the many questions! And to Nicola for being our chauffeur & guide for the day.

Derby Road Trip - day 1 - Alfreton N.S, inside.

The background to my road trip to Derby to visit nursery schools & preschool settings began when connections were made through social media between Peter from the amazing Cosy Direct & myself. In September he paid a visit to N.Ireland & I agreed to show him around my school & 2 others. He was travelling with Angela, the Head of Alfreton N.S & Gill, the Chair of their Board of Governors (Peter is the vice-chair). So myself & the 2 principals of the other nurseries they visited began to plot our return visit to Derby!! The fact that we finish school at the end of June was an advantage as we could plan a trip in our own time & yet see the nurseries in action. Angela was good enough to agree to host us for a full day & Peter said he would sort out other settings for us to see on the 2nd day.

This was my first time visiting settings within the UK outside of N.Ireland, I have lots of experience visiting European settings but none in England, I'm not sure I was prepared for how different they would feel. 
Alfreton is a stand alone nursery school with 110 children attending on a part time basis, some of the children may do some full days, others just the morning or afternoon. They operate an open plan day (or continuous provision) so the whole building is used & the children are free to move from indoors to outdoors throughout their time at school. By having it open plan, the whole area can be used rather than having 2 distinct classrooms with each having a house corner, water tray or sand tray etc. as is more common in most N.Ireland settings (though both the Principals travelling with me operate an open plan system in their schools). In this nursery Angela, the Head Teacher is not teaching full-time so there are 2 other teachers & numerous assistants. The level of staffing is very high & this allowed for a very calm & relaxed feel to the whole setting. Most of the nursery schools we visited had officer managers too - most unsual from our point of view. 
From the moment we walked in the door the welcoming atmosphere was so apparent, everyone was so calm & friendly & even as children were being dropped off it was a very relaxed, laid back affair. The school was laid out in very distinct areas - a construction/block area, baking area (on Thursdays) science area, number tent, floor play for trains, mark making area, role play/imaginative areas, music corner, reading area & an atelier area with water play & art. At any time any of these areas could be closed off by simply placing a clothes drier across the entrance. 

A simple cloth barrier allows areas to be closed off during the day.

The space was also divided into numeracy areas & literacy areas - so the construction, science, baking & number tent were on one side of the school with the role play, mark making & imaginative areas on the literacy side.

Baking & numbers on the numeracy side of the school.

Mark making & painting in the Atelier area.

The building I am in is only 8 years old & everything still feels very new so I always love visiting more established settings, they always have the best resources built up over time. Staff were designated to certain areas each day to allow for there to always be enough staff between all the different areas indoor & out. Angela & her team have made the most of every nook & cranny in this building & have made 3 very distinct story rooms/areas for the 3 groups they have broken the children into. I think many primary school colleagues could learn alot from this nursery school on differentiation & how to manage diverse groups of children with varying learning styles. The nursery also felt more like a classroom than my setting in alot of ways because of all the print & numbers around the rooms - I felt that our Primary 1 or 2 class could operate very easily in a space like this & that this was a prime example of learning through play operating at the highest level.
Respect is a big theme in this school & it really does show right across the school, from the way the children speak to each to other and the adults and vice versa. This is a team that works well together, making it look effortless & Angela in particular, moves about the space in such a serene manner, nothing looks like it is too much trouble yet, I know that she must work very hard to have got the school to this amazing level of learning.

This nursery is a Rights Respecting School & respect is a key theme throughout the school.

Lots of natural storage was in evidence.

The snack area is in a little covered courtyard space.

Home Corner 

Evidence of learning is everywhere.

The Atelier Space is an inspiring area - who wouldn't want to be creative in an area like this.

We were very lucky to spend all day in this amazing school & their outdoor space deserves a post all of it's own - it is that good!
I only hope that when visitors come to my setting they are made half as welcome as we were & that they find a 10th of the inspiration I got from this amazing school.

A massive thanks to Angela & her team at Alfreton for making us so welcome & to the many children who allowed me to join them in their play that day. Most of all thanks to Peter for reaching out to me & making this connection - a life long one I hope.

Maths - Icelandic Style!

Thanks to Unnur Henrysdóttir , my colleague from our partner school, Leikskólinn Stekkjarás in Iceland for this lovely post on how to take learning outdoors & make subjects concrete for even the youngest of children. 

Making a number line.

We had fun playing with numbers one rainy morning, the task was to find numbers from 1 to a 100 and put them in a straight line. It can be tricky to know if the number is 6 or a 9, does the round bit stay down or up. Does 3 come before 1 when you write 13? These were all questions that came up. One of the children was quick to come up with the explanation that 1 is on the left and 3 is on the right. 

Finding the right number in such a large pile can be tricky!

Looking for number 77.

After we had our lunch it was time to head in to the woods, for some of them it would be there last trip since they are going to big school in few weeks time and we are all going on school holidays. Since we had been working on numbers it seemed a good idea to take that idea a bit further and work on some numbers there as well. We brought with us a tape measure and I asked the children what we could measure? The answer came quickly, "we can find out how long the worms are!" Of course, it was raining so plenty of them were around. The longest worm turned out to be eight and a half centimetres or 8.5 which was kind of a strange number.  

Worm measuring!

We carried on trying to find something else to measure and next thing we found was different sticks that we had been using to dig in the mud finding worms. How long were our sticks and who had the longest one? 

Since it was both wet and windy and some were a bit cold we needed to keep moving, so for the next task they could choose between jumping in a puddle, trying to empty it and of course count how many jumps were needed to empty it or see how far they could jump with one attempt. 

Numbers did go anywhere between 30 and a 100 but all were happy with their number and made sure to shout it out loud.  This was certainly a good day, one I hope the children will remember and it showed them how maths can be fun.

Outdoor Play Party - Guest Post 1 Summer 2014

As I begin my long summer break I have once again turned to friends across the globe to contribute guest posts to keep the Outdoor Play Party going over the next 8 weeks.

This first guest post is from the incredible Lesley Romanoff, Director over at Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School. Over a few weeks in June & July her wonderful school opens its doors to accommodate summer Tink camps & I have loved following their adventures over the past few years - from the Fairy/Batman wall to the Insect Hotel, to the cardboard city & plastic bottle flowers - their creative flair never ceases to amaze me. But most importantly, the Tink camps allow children to just be, there is no pressure to perform certain tasks or produce end results, those lucky enough to take part are allowed to enjoy playing.

Embracing The Nothingness 

On the third day of our Tink camp, one of the 5-year olds asked me, with all the seriousness that one of the littles will bring to a question, “Lesley,” –and then in almost a whisper— “Do you know where the stink is?” 

It made me smile, because for three days the littles had been enjoying three days of extended school/play. Our Tink camp is for mixed ages 5 through 11, though I keep sneaking it up, next year it will probably have to include 12-year olds. We have 18 children. They roam and rove, though we do have a planning meeting each day. This gives us a chance to check in with each other and share ideas and projects. Many of the children have gone to our school, others join us each year just for the camps, and we have a handful of children altogether new to the experience each session.  

For this session, all the younger set attending camp had gone to our school. They seemed to just be happy to develop story lines that felt familiar. If you asked them what they were doing, they would have told you they were playing “family” and they had inserted a danger set called “Jewel Battle.” They had different home locations and at intervals, they would suddenly have to give chase to catch a jewel thief or run to a new home. 

By the third day, the hole we had mapped out for where the stink had been buried had gotten so big that their running feet had to navigate around it, over it, or through it. Maybe that is the way the stink caught their attention, or maybe it was at our meeting that day, when we talked about the stink and how we hadn’t found it. 

Rewind a bit, two of the older children, sisters, arrived on Monday with a “yes-hello-let’s-dig-up-the-stink-pot.” Their mother had told me that they had talked of nothing else all school year. They had been part of the group that planted the pot. The stink pot is/was a stock pot that they had filled with leaves, mushrooms, clay, and mud. It really did smell awful.  

The stink had become something big and unknown. The 5-year old described something that snuck around like a monster. Others thought it might be a dinosaur. Why else would you continue to dig such a giant hole? Surely this Stink Pot was something we should probably stop looking for in case we found it. 

The story of the search had taken hold of all of us. A parent brought in a metal detector and then later an even fancier detector. Parents had a hard time leaving each morning. Would this be the day? The littles probably thought a beast would burst out at any minute and the older children simply became more determined. We scoured the photo library and printed out photos to try to triangulate the spot. Little did we know that we did not dig far enough into the photo library first. On Wednesday, after camp, I found a photograph of a map one of the children had drawn. This led me to a second set of photos and even a video of them burying the stink pot. 

We relocated the dig and found it in minutes. Just like that. 

There would be no den building, no fairy houses, no nails and hammers as our advertising for Tink Camp touted. We had to find the stink. The children voted to rename the camp Stink at the Cooperative School, but oh the branding, children, what about the branding? We did have an excellent idea and certainly around our next campfire, we would tell tales of searching for the giant Stink Pot monster. 

We say that Tink is “all about the ideas” because mainly we want to embrace the pursuit of nothingness. In adult terms, it is like the Seinfeld of Summer Camps. It is a camp about nothing, but in that, it is about everything. And it is the perfect way to spend a bite-sized set of Summer Days. 

Summer should be . . . 

Nothing. And in the nothing is everything 

For more information about why this is, please see Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School by Jessica Lahey in The Atlantic, June 20 2014.

There were a few great mud inspired posts in the last Outdoor Play Party, which were perfect for International Mud Day but if I have to choose a favourite one, it is from Adventures of Adam on the amazingly simple yet oh so effective mud kitchen they created in their back garden for Adam to enjoy daily.

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

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