Activities and tasks to help get your children outside this month. By Julie Mountain

Activity

MICRO-COLLECTIONS

Hopefully, since last month’s magazine, you have been able to gather lots of micro-containers: Tic Tac boxes, film canisters, mini jam jars, Kinder egg cases, lip balm pots, glitter tubes… There are many ways to use them, and it is simple to theme the scavenging activities to encourage children’s focus in particular directions. Here are some launch points:

  • Fill containers with as many different objects as possible – children will need to find truly tiny objects to manage this. Ask children why some of them were able to fit lots more objects into their container than others.
  • Find just one object that will completely fill the container (sneaky tip: liquids really will fill the whole container!).
  • Give each child one colour of the rainbow to seek out – then combine the contents of each child’s container to make a rainbow pattern, observing how even within each colour there are many, many variations of tone and hue.
  • Hand out paint sample cards and ask children to find objects that colour match as closely as possible. Who made the best match? Who had the most difficult colour to match (sneaky tip: it’s often blue)? Look at the names of the colours on the sample cards – can children invent names for the colours they found?
  • Look for tiny man-made objects that will fit in the containers.
  • Ask children to find anything they like the look of; bring them back together to arrange everyone’s objects in size order.

Store the micro-containers outdoors as part of your loose-parts resources – and keep on collecting them. That way, children will integrate these containers into their own freely chosen play, using some of the skills, language and knowledge generated by the adult-led activities.

Story to share

Big Feelings by Alexandra Penfold, illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman The perfect story for celebrating a Summer of Play: neighbourhood children find a wonderfully rich piece of wasteland, full of wildflowers and long grass and abandoned junk. However, disagreements soon arise: what can they do to share the space and play together? After enjoying the vibrantly diverse illustrations, children will need to rush off to play – and for adults, the uplifting empathy storyline will provide resonance for PSED.

Nature watch

LOOK OUT FOR…

Dragonflies: A cool and wet May has meant that dragonfly nymphs, which usually metamorphose into dragonflies during May and June, are running a little late. In July you’ll find them early in the morning or at dusk, when they are slower. Inspect reeds and grasses adjacent to waterways to be rewarded with the delicate empty nymph shells, which can be carefully picked off the reeds for closer examination.

Swifts:These summer visitors spend almost all their lives on the wing – including sleeping – and their graceful swooping, diving and twirling airborne dance is wonderful to watch. Encourage children to make up their own swift dance, using capes and ribbons to mimic the shapes that swifts form in the air.

Cuckoo spit: Children will be equally horrified and fascinated to learn that the froghopper insect creates its protective ‘cuckoo spit’ from its bottom. A gentle poke of the foam with a small stick will sometimes reveal the tiny green insect itself in the centre.

Ox-eye daisies: Take daisy chain manufacturing to the next level with giant Ox-eye daisies. Creating slits and threading stalks is a brilliant and purposeful finger exercise, and for young children is much easier than with ‘standard’ sized daisies. If you don’t have Ox-eye daisies, plant some seeds directly into the ground so they will be ready for next year.

Maintenance

IT’S TIME TO…

Audit outdoor play equipment and resources. Make the most of quieter days while children are on holiday to trawl through play resources, looking for:

  • Items that are too damaged to repair or that look unattractive and past their play ‘use-by’ date. Recycle what you can; dispose of the rest responsibly.
  • Resources that need rejuvenating: seek out items that can be repaired or repainted and sanded down, then rediscovered and enjoyed anew. Make a list of resource maintenance jobs and start working your way through them.
  • Items that are hugely popular and could do with being replenished or increased in number to ensure play equity – so many outdoor squabbles could be avoided by simply having a plentiful supply of popular resources.
  • Opportunities to increase the play value of fixed equipment: add timber planks, long sticks, folding A-frames, sheets, pegs, crates and pallets to climbing structures to turn them into shady dens for hot summer days.

A new project

OUTDOOR GALLERY

Chances are, children’s work is on display all around your indoor setting. Take time this summer to show that the ‘work’ they do outdoors is just as valuable and worthy of admiration. Here are a few ideas to help spark your creativity:

  • Allocate an area outdoors to be a sculpture garden. Display any weatherproof artworks to their best advantage, thinking about how light will fall on them, how children will see them from different angles and perhaps how they might be spotted by passers-by.
  • Non-weatherproof artworks could be displayed on a plinth (for example, an upturned log or a crate with a cloth draped over it) under clear glass or plastic jars.
  • Laminate children’s drawings and paintings to exhibit in frames. Old picture frames are often available in charity shops, tips and skips (see Resources) – remove the glass first, if necessary. Try to collect a wide range of sizes and suspend them from fences, walls, tree branches… A huge, fancy frame left empty and suspended makes an interesting play prompt.
  • Make your own picture frames with sticks and twine – they don’t have to be rectilinear; let children experiment with shapes and use lots of twine to hold them together. You might need to add a few judicious knots…
  • Try some land art: cut shapes of thick black plastic and place them onto grass, weighed down with stones to prevent them from moving. Leave them in place for a few weeks, then remove – voila, you have ‘grass art’ where the lack of sunlight has prevented chlorophyll from being formed and left yellow grass.
  • Reception teacher Caitie Ross’s children produce Jackson Pollock-style mud-splatter images on canvases made of torn-up bedding. They display them suspended from twigs.
  • Use the nail polishes you collected (see April’s Outdoor Calendar) to create miniature paintings. Challenge children to recreate a landscape or capture the likeness of a friend on a small, smooth pebble. The vivid colours of nail polishes lend themselves to Pop Art and Fauvism – it’s never too early to introduce children to a variety of art styles.
  • Include explanatory labels adjacent to the children’s work, as any art gallery or museum would: include the artist’s name, the artwork’s title and the date it was created. You could even ask the children how much they would like to charge potential purchasers…

Resources

BEG, BUY OR BORROW…

Be brave and go skip scavenging: If your neighbourhood is anything like mine, there will be household skips in driveways as families spend holiday money on home improvements instead! Always ask first, but see if you can collect interesting loose-parts resources. Ask yourself: How might children use this? What will it add to their play? Is it ‘safe enough’ to play with? How can I mitigate unacceptable risks?

Make friends with the people who run your local amenity site (tip): I know mine very well, because I’m a regular visitor and probably the only one who takes away more than they drop off! Tips are a particularly good source of ‘wheels’, which children can use to transform stationary resources into exciting new portable versions.

Looking ahead

MAKE PLANS FOR…

  • Summer of Play is the theme of this year’s Play Day on 4 August. Visit www.playday.org.uk for more information about events and activities.
  • The delayed Paralympic Games start on 24 August in Tokyo and offer opportunities to talk about how humans can compete physically in different ways. Check out www.paralympic.org for athlete stories and event details.

Risk assessment

WATCH OUT FOR…

Overheating: Is there sufficient shade outdoors? Even with sunscreen applied, children and adults are susceptible to dehydration and heat headaches, or even sunstroke.

  • Create as much shade as possible, draping sheets, tarpaulins and blankets over play equipment or A-frames, and encourage children to play under trees and shrubs by locating compelling resources under and around them.
  • Keep water bottles outdoors and ensure a source of fresh drinking water is always available – I find H&O Plastics’ 5l food-grade bucket (https://buybuckets.co.uk) with a pelican pump attachment in the lid is hygienic, portable and easy to use independently, even for the youngest children.
  • Fill lots of tuff-spots (or large trays, pots and pans) with water for cooling hot feet and hands, and attach a sprinkler to the end of a hosepipe to periodically drench everyone.

‘Our Garden in 2021’

FOR THE RECORD…

In response to 18 months of Covid restrictions, many organisations are promoting a Summer of Play. Celebrate by showcasing all the joyful movements and moments that fine weather and lots of energetic young children can produce. Share your floorbook with parents and carers to help them understand the unique and special nature of outdoor play. Then create floorbooks for them, using three or four large sheets of sugar paper stapled or spiral-bound together. Ask families to document and share their own Summer of Play with their own floorbooks.