More Garden Time

Out in the garden again today. A bit chilly today though so coats were needed!

I had set up this invitation to play with a road, cars, some mud for the building vehicles.

I left the chalks out to see if anyone would expand the road a bit but no one chose to do this.

The children then spotted the drain pipe and asked for some water and balls. 'W' got some of the car's too and they all spent some time posting things down the tube and running to watch up plot out the other end!

'W' and 'R' then spent some time jumping between some of the logs! Round and round they went! Very carefully so they didn't fall off, great balancing skills!

After having a bit of free play time we then got to the activity of the day which was taking some cuttings! We have done some seed planting here and potato & onion planting here so the children are becoming aware of the different ways we grow plants and flowers. But taking cuttings seemed to be a new one for most of them!!

We spoke about the types of plants that taking cuttings would work for, having a sniff of interesting plants on the way! 'R' thought this lavender smelled lovely!

This rosemary wasn't so popular though!

When we had made our choices we sat down to have a look at these special pots I had for taking cuttings, will jelly in them! So when they start to send out new roots we would be able to see them!

Each of the children popped their cuttings into the pot

 We needed to pull the loser leaves off some of the cuttings so they didn't rot and go yucky

 It's a tricky job for little fingers!

 Then we had them all ready in the jelly to sit in the window and see what happens!

The second activity I had planned for this morning was one requested by 'W'! I was scanning my Pinterest feed one afternoon for a very quick 'I'm bored' spontaneous activity...when 'W' spotted this link and said he wanted to give it a go!! So this then became an activity in itself for a little while, I sat with 'W' looking at the ideas I had already pinned to see which he thought would be fun!!
So in order to create these crazy cress heads first we needed some silly pictures;

I then popped inside to print these off while Pip had some bubbles and played with the children for a bit!

 We've done this a few times now so the children know what they're doing!

Compost in the pots. Then the seeds!

 Lots of seeds to make sure we have lots of hair!

 Then give them a good drink

 And set them aside to start growing!!!!

We were all starting to get a bit cold after that so decided to come in for our last planned activity of the day' making bread and butter!! One of my favourite, and fastest breads to make is Soda Bread! It's great with kids as there is minimal waiting around, no leaving it to rise and then come back, and it's such good fun.
But we need to work out those muscles first as we need the butter milk!! So to make butter and butter milk simply put some double cream in a clean jar and SHAKE!

 shake shake shake!!

 shake shake shake

 shake shake shake!!!!

 Phew! once that was all done and we had the butter milk we got all the ingredients together and did some kneeding! Lots of squishing and squashing. Great work out for little hands and it smells amazing, even better we get to eat it later on!!

 After lots of kneeding and stretching and shaping we made letter marks in the top we we knew which was which and then a brushing of egg over the top, leave them to rise for a bit and then in the oven.

 The letter markings were a bit hard to decipher after cooking but I think we got it right!

Later on that afternoon we headed up to our local preschool and bought a cake for their fundraising! Lovely cakes available and we sat on a picnic bench having a snack while we waited for the school kids to come out!