Drain Pipes

Often the value of enabling children to play with natural materials is forgotten in a world where we have such a variety of, often expensive, toys. This afternoon our garden play session reminded me of the value of natural objects in encouraging the children to question what they can do with these things. 

Banging the pipe to make noise

Jumping over the pipe

Balancing a ball on top

Attempting to stand the pipe up

Flowing water down the pipe

Children aged from one to six years of age chose to play with the pipes at some point during this afternoon and, as demonstrated above, they all came up with a different purpose for the pipe and demonstrated that natural curiosity that comes from having open ended resources.

Pumpkin Watercolours

As we are approaching halloween I introduced a bit of pumpkin themed watercolour painting today. After using black glue to paint the faces of the pumpkins I let the boys loose with the watercolours. The black glue forms a raised edge that enables the children to paint inside while the face still stands out.

The children started off painting orange like the pumpkins we had looked at although others prefered to personalise their picture with some purples! The raised surfaces helped the older ones to enhance their fine motor skills through helping them paint within the eyes and nose.

The end result was some lovely colourful pumpkins to add to our display!

Autumn Apple Painting

We were lucky enough to be given some lovely small autumn apples. As we had a surplus I thought it would be great to use some of them in our paintings. I first cut open the apples in different directions and the boys compared the shapes that they saw inside, one of them thought he could see a space rocket!

We then chose some autumnal colours and set about the creative task. One thing that I had not foreseen was that paint sticks the apples to the paper so our youngest kept looking surprised when he could not lift his apple, he didn't mind though and created a nice picture by sliding his apple around the paper. 

Once we had some nice prints, the painting turned into more of a messy play session with the children choosing to paint their hands and make autumnal hand prints instead!

Baking Powder and Vinegar Play

Today we introduced a little science experiment into our daily activities. I set a three year old the challenge of finding out what happens when you mix baking powder and vinegar.  He had great fun experimenting with this and definitely proved that science can be fun! 

I added some food colouring to clear vinegar and provided some pipettes and a baster to enable the vinegar to be added to the baking powder. Cautiously he began to add the vinegar using the smaller pipettes. Initially he was fascinated by the colour changes when the vinegar hit the powder but then he noticed the bubbles, putting his ear closer to listen to the resulting fizzing sound. 

To see the reaction better he began to use the bigger baster and this gave a much better bubbling reaction and produced some nice colourful results.  

Autumn Leaves

We have been making the most of the lovely warm weather out and about and stumbled upon some lovely colours of leaves that had begun to fall from the trees in the park. This prompted plenty of discussion ranging from describing the different colours of the leaves through to talking about how it is 'Autumn'. 

The leaves were so colourful that I decided we must be able to make something with them so I set the boys the task of collecting some leaves which they thought was a great game and kept running up to show me their offerings. One child decided he would rather collect sticks which gave me the idea of creating an Autumn collage. 

We took all of our autumnal things home and I gave the boys some sticky back plastic. They set about making their own collages and particularly enjoyed hammering the plastic back down at the end. I though the colourful results were a lovely sample of the nature we saw in the park.