activity
IN A TIGHT SPOT
If your outdoor space is small or awkwardly shaped, now might be a good time to look at whether reorganising it, changing resources around or refocusing certain areas could release useful space or provide children with a new perspective on how the space can be used. Try a few experiments with the garden on days when it is less busy – involve children in the moving and transporting, as well as giving them a voice in the decision-making. Some questions to explore:
Why are resources stored where they are? Would they be used differently if they were located somewhere else?
Could particular areas be combined? Could your mud kitchen / lab become part of the construction area? Could bikes and trikes have a closer physical connection to role-play resources? How might children play or interact differently if resources were combined in new ways?
How would moving portable planting (i.e. in pots or troughs or hanging baskets) change the character of the space? Could they, along with large-scale loose parts (pallets/cable reels/crates) be used to create new small, intimate spaces for retreat or quieter play?
Could you introduce portable dividers to shape the space? Check online for ideas, but some of the simplest dividers are made from partially dismantled pallets, with robust feet screwed (not nailed) on – they don’t have to be very tall to provide visual separation in a small space. Cover the dividers with marine plywood, which can withstand the weather, and get your dividers to do double duty by painting the ply with chalkboard paint, or attaching hooks and guttering or perhaps joining lengths of netting or wire mesh to them, for weaving.
natural learning
Some flowers lend themselves to the creation of chains and necklaces – daisies are the commonest, but their delicate stems can be quite tricky to handle for young fingers. Search the setting’s or your own gardens for flowers with chunkier stems to make the precise movements required to make it easier to pierce the stem. I can highly recommend ox-eye daisies for this, or corncockles, cow parsley or cornflowers, all of which grow profusely in summer. Dandelions make good crowns. As a rule, wildflowers ought not to be picked, so ask permission if possible, and if not, just take a few stems, leaving the vast majority to set seed. For next summer’s flower chains, why not seed a raised bed with a mix of wildflower and grass species?
Hot summer days can precede stormy evenings. Help children manage fears about storms by spending lots of time outdoors experiencing the changing air pressure and humidity. Use a simple barometer (there are plenty of second-hand ones on eBay) to explain that high pressure and warm air can keep storms away, whereas low pressure, especially if it drops quickly, suggests rain is on its way. Warm temperatures and high humidity are the sign of storms to come, so helping children feel these changes with their bodies can help normalise weather patterns and reduce fears.
Play a grass game, with an accompanying rhyme: all you need is long stems of grass with seeds at the top. This is great for practising fine motor skills and tripod grip!
Here’s a tree in summer: hold up the grass stem with the seed head at the top
Here’s a tree in winter: squeeze fingers on the stem and sweep them upwards to remove and capture the seeds and show the leftover stalk of grass
Here’s a bunch of flowers: pinch the seeds in a bunch And here’s the April showers: throw the seeds into the air
STEM
AUGUST SPRINGBOARDS
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I really love the smell of ‘petrichor’. You might not have come across the word but you’ll be familiar with the smell. Petrichor is the name given to the smell that arises when rain falls on dry soil, and it is stronger after light rain because of the way it falls, releasing microscopic bubbles containing bacteria from the soil. It is common in summer and an opportunity to plan some sensory explorations inspired by the unique petrichor smell. Tour the garden or park, seeking features that have distinctive smells; look for manufactured items (e.g. bricks, play equipment) as well as natural ones (e.g. rocks, bark, flowers):
Can children use adjectives to describe the ‘normal’ smells of these features? Which smells to they like and dislike?
Do these features smell different during and after rain? In what ways?
Can children invent their own words to describe smells? Petrichor is taken from the Greek words pétra (meaning stone) and ikhōr (the blood of the gods) – can children combine words they know to make new ones for summer smells?
What does summer rain taste like? Take children outdoors in light rain, ask them to look up to the sky and try to catch raindrops on their tongues.
Can children distinguish a difference between the smell of rain and tap water? Collect some rain in a few clean vessels, then compare with freshly poured tap water.
active stories
A Holi ‘colour run’ is a brilliant activity for summer (even though Holi is usually celebrated at the start of spring). Colour runs are physically active, huge fun, culturally significant to many families and can be carried out as a fundraiser for your setting. The storybook Festival of Colours (Little Simon, 2021) is the perfect way to develop children’s understanding of Holi and the meaning of colour runs as it follows Chintoo and Mintoo as they prepare for theirs, by exploring colours in their garden.
To host a colour run, you will need packets of special powdered pigment, plus sunglasses, which are useful protection from wayward flingers. The idea is to hurl handfuls of colours at runners as they pass by – you might also like to spray them with a bit of water to make the colours blend and bleed into one another, adding to the kaleidoscope!
physical development springboards
If it’s too hot for very active outdoor play, consider working on ‘bodyfulness’ and mindfulness. The ability to sit still is the result of years of developing muscle control – as is often said, the child that can’t sit still needs more movement, not less. So explore unhurried and controlled yoga and Pilates-style movements in a shady spot. Encourage children to move as slowly as they can, putting as much effort into the ‘return’ movement as they do into the ‘flex’ movement. Talk to children about how sturdy yet flexible their bodies are and how clever they are to be able to move us and keep us safe. Enjoy the stretches and deliberate motions – and, if possible, ask children to be quiet or silent and focus their vision on one feature – perhaps the sky, a tree or another child.
Complement these precise and purposeful actions with much quicker and riskier parkour movements – feeling and exulting in the body’s resilience and speed as they leap and bound, roll and crawl, spin, slide and bounce across the fixtures and features in the garden.
Playing with bubbles is a sure-fire way to get children (and adults) moving. There are loads of recipes out there, but after many, many years of testing them, I have come down in favour of Bubble Brothers mix (available online), because each packet makes 5 litres of truly extraordinarily strong liquid – we have made bubbles 4m long, using the ‘two sticks and two lengths of string’ wand method. Mastering the correct swishing technique to create these huge bubbles takes time and will make excellent use of the controlled movements children have been testing with their bodyful yoga activities.
August top tips
Lots of plants will be flowering, so collect seeds for storing and planting out next spring. Store the seeds in small, sealed envelopes, with the name of the plant.
It’s time to apply for a Woodland Trust Trees for Schools pack. The trees are free, but it is first come, first served, so apply now. They will be delivered in November, the ideal time for tree planting: www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/plant-trees/schools-and-communities.
Optimise your water butt – check for dislodged guttering and blockages. Leave buckets out on rainy evenings to collect even more water. Set children off watering the plants the next day. To avoid stressing plants, they should be watered in the morning or late afternoon, avoiding the high heat of midday.
If you have a herb garden, ask children to snip a few leaves from each species, place them into ice cube trays, add water and then freeze overnight. Add these to children’s drinks the next day for a delicious aroma and flavour.
Plant ‘paperwhite’ narcissus bulbs (a variety of daffodils) in pots– they can be left outdoors and brought in during autumn when the weather cools – by midwinter, they will provide a welcome pop of fragrant brightness indoors.