Sunny afternoon and Planting our first few seeds

The weather here has been beautiful this weekend!! I have heard a rumor more rain is on the way though so we are taking full advantage of the sun while we have it.

After doing the school run we headed straight outside to enjoy the sun.

Out came the bubbles

Baby 'M' joined us outside for some fresh air too! She was watching the bubbles float around her.

Baby 'M' got hold of a ribbon wand, I'll need to make a couple of smaller ones so she can play too!

Lots more Bubbles and ribbon wands being flapped around to catch the "Bubble Bees!!!!"

'W' and 'E' spent some time exploring the new messy play area. I did a bit of gardening over the weekend and it seemed such a waste to put everything in the garden waste bin, so we chopped bits up ready for the children to play with!

'E' spent a lot of time looking through the tins, emptying them out, feeling the textures of the smooth leaves. She then started moving them around (this is linked to her emerging transporting schema that we learn more about here), putting some in the wheelbarrow, putting some through the cage for the rabbit to munch on!

Then we got on with our potting!!

I gave the children a couple of pots each and placed some compost in a large tray so they could scoop their own. The older children filled their pots quickly but then came back and felt the compost, squishing large clumps in their hands to break them up.

'E' had a tight hold on her pot and so couldn't get much compost in to start off with

She changed her approach to gently hold the pot with one hand and grab handfuls of compost to transfer instead! Great problem solving!

When we had our pots all ready we came back to the table to choose our seeds!! I have 3 different types of sunflowers and a Giant Pumpkin!! We started off with the Pumpkin, I handed out one big seed each. 'W' knew what to do with it straight away, he pushed his finger into the pot to make a hole and then dropped the seed inside. 'E' was watching her big brother closely and soon followed suit, we then worked together to push the soil from the side of the pot over the hole to tuck our seeds into bed!!

Sunflowers next, each of the children pointed to the variety they wanted to grow and we started off the process again. Poking a hole in the soil with our fingers and dropping the seeds in.

Once those were done I was faced with a chorus of "can I do another one, can I do another one?"

Lucky I had a few spare pots so the children each chose another variety of sunflower!

I made sure to label them as we went so I knew what and who's all the pots were.

By this point the boys had had enough and decided to return to their game of football which left 'E' and I with the final job of giving them a good drink. 'E' knew this was an important step and had run off to get a watering can before I mentioned it!!

Our seeds are now sat comfortably on the windowsill next to the frogspawn, I'm sure we will be checking in with them regularly to spot the first signs of life!!!

A Misty Morning at the Park

'W' and 'E' arrived after the school run this morning and asked if we could go out to the park today, "of course we can!!" On the way we thought we would knock on Pip's door and see if they wanted to come too, and they did!!

We started off with everyone on the swings, 'E' in the little ones, Pip's girls chose the big girl swings and 'W' headed straight to the tyre ones!

We pulled them forwards asking "higher? .......higher?" to their giggles and smiles before letting them fall backwards! Pip started showing the girls how to kick their legs back and forth so they kept on going!

'W' then spotted all the crunchy leaves left from Autumn laying all around the edges of the park, you can guess what happened next!!

Adults weren't safe with a camera either!

We had a great time throwing leaves around and after brushing off bits of leaves and picking slugs out of our hair we headed home for some lunch!

After lunches I thought we could do a little Spring activity with my new stamps! I pulled out some green paper, stamps and inks and off we went!

'E' spent a while trying to work out the order in which to stamp. She copied her brother and picked up a stamp putting it to the ink first, then having a look to see what happened.

She then put it straight onto the other ink colour before then again copying her brother and beginning to stamp the paper. She continued in this manor using the stamp between the inks and only occasionally stamping onto the paper. I demonstrated a couple of times to stamp the ink just once and then onto the paper "or the colours will get all mixed up!" After a while she began to understand and spent more time stamping on the paper, it's a tricky combination for little ones!

'W' and I did lots of stamping pictures, 'W' helped me out with my pictures "you missed a bit there Heather!"

Once we had lots of pictures between us I cut them up into strips and glued them in rings making Paper Chains to hang across the living room!!

Planting out Potatoes!!

A bit of a change to routine today as I was covering for Worms Eye View after she had a little accident at the beginning of the week!

But we took advantage of the slightly warmer weather and took the opportunity to get my potatoes in the ground! I had spent some time at the weekend weeding and digging in some fertiliser so it was all ready for planting.

The girls took turns digging holes for the potatoes. We spoke about where the holes needed to be so they were spaced out enough to grow but close enough so we could fit our 2 varieties in the one bed.

We looked where the shoots were starting to sprout out of the potato and that's how we know they are ready to get into the ground. We looked closely at the two varieties having different colour shoots, maybe they will be coloured potatoes?!!

We tucked each one into it's hole, making sure the shoots were facing up so they can start to grow up out of the earth

And then tucked them into 'bed' saying "night night Mr Potato!! Start growing for us now!"

We will visit our potatoes regularly to top up the soil, perhaps give them a drink and check on the progress!

Frogspawn Hunting!!!

This year's Spring project is FROGS!!!

We have decided to go get some frogspawn to watch them metamorphosis. We headed to our local Nature Reserve to find some!

We spent some time on the decked area first looking into the water for what we could see. Unfortunately it's still a little early in the year yet so we couldn't see much. This big pond snail was about all we could see!

'E' and 'W' both had a turn holding it. I asked 'W' what he though it was. I said about the hard shell and squishy body inside, "I'm sure you can think of an animal like that!" 

"It's like a snail" he said "but why it is in the water?"

"Because it's a pond snail, it lives in water. Not like our garden snails, they would drown"

Then we got to the main business of fishing out some frogspawn. 'W' wanted to have a go at scooping it out. He had to hold on to Georgia's hand to make sure he didn't fall in!!

It was quite hard to scoop up as it was all stuck together in big clumps but he managed to get some pond water which we needed too for the frogspawn to live in.

Once we got some in a pot, enough for us, Pippa and our local preschool we had a really good look. 'W' and 'E' put their fingers in it and we spoke about how it felt a bit like jelly maybe. We had to be quite gentle and not poke it too much as we didn't want to hurt any of the frogs.

We had another look at where the frogspawn was living, in the middle of some rushes where the water wasn't very deep.

As we decided to start heading home we came across a wormy worm! 'E' was very interested as it started moving across my hand and round onto the back, it was lifting up it's head and seemed to be 'looking' around.

'E' was feeling brave and gave the worm a stroke, she didn't want to hold it though. 'W' had a good look but didn't want to touch or hold it telling me it was "yucky"

As we continued on our way to the car 'W' started asking about the baby frogs and what would happen to them. "They are going to miss their mummies" he was saying and I explained that frog babies don't stay with their mummies, they look after themselves. He didn't seem entirely convinced with the explanation but we will be spending lots of time over the Spring watching our frogs develop, reading books and learning about them so 'W' will understand soon.

Trip to the Garden Centre

Today we decided to pop to the Garden Centre! We wanted to have a look at some plants and flowers and allow the children to choose some seeds they would like to grow this year.

We started in the outside area looking at the fences, trellis, sheds, water butts and compost bins. The children had lots of questions about the things we found which we answered as best we could!

The bird baths and garden ornaments held the children's attention for sometime. The children all told us the names of animals they knew, they petted the dogs and giggled at the monkeys, dipped fingers in the water and told us it was "Cold"!!

We found some flowers and spoke about which colours we liked the best and then spotted some more ornaments but we asked the children to be very careful around those ones as they might get broken if they were knocked

We headed inside next to choose some seeds! All the children had a good look around at all the seeds that were available. They told us which they recognised and asked questions about some of the more unusual ones. Both 'W' and 'E' chose a packed of salad leaves to grow and I decided to get some fresh Pumpkin and Squash seeds too. I said to them I have lots of carrot and Sunflower seeds at home already but they can help me plant those too!!

After all that shopping we had just enough time to pop into the cafe and have a cake and drink! We had a lovely time chatting about the seeds each of the children had chosen and where they were going to be planted, in the garden or maybe at the allotments.

Characteristics of Effective Learning
All of the children enjoyed our trip to the Garden centre.They listened to the rules we set in place to keep them safe. Stay together and do not run around. They were engaged and interested to know about the different things that were sold in the garden centre. Asking what a compost bin was for and how a water butt worked. They made their own choices and selections when choosing seeds and shared their personal likes and dislikes. All of the children were focused and interested in learning about gardens and planting.