Enabling Environments: Outdoors - Stick together!

Stick stomping? Den building? Pooh Sticks? Dried cowpat flicking? It's so hard to decide on a favourite stick activity - there are just so many to choose from. Sticks provide a step towards understanding and caring about the world we live in. A pile of sticks in your setting will enrich the curriculum, enticing children into magical worlds of knights, fairies, acrobats, explorers and engineers.

Sticks are the ultimate eco-toy - recyclable and easily replenished, they cost nothing and can do (almost) anything. They lend themselves to being sorted, stacked, snapped, buried, joined together and leaned on.

They can be cumbersome, noisy and a little unpredictable, not unlike young children - perhaps that's where the attraction lies.

Observation of stick play will reveal children digging, banging, bending, tapping, pointing and balancing with their sticks, using their whole bodies and exercising control of movements and actions as they do so. Playing with sticks can also be a wonderfully peaceful and private experience; often a child will simply sit and feel the texture of the bark or rub the nodes of old branches.

Gathering a stick collection should be an adventure in itself. However, do consider how children might want to use sticks, and collect accordingly.

Hefty sticks of 1-1.5m long are perfect for stomping and constructing dens; shorter, forked sticks make great tepees and water diviners; and smooth straight sticks of any length work well as flagpoles, swords, limbo poles, tightropes and marshmallow or sausage holders.

ACTIVITY IDEAS

Create a 'stomping stick' collection: choose sticks that are slightly taller than the children and at least as thick as their wrists; their size demands whole-body effort in order to manoeuvre them and it will take some practice before children are able to handle these large objects. Stand on a hard surface, and choose games that increase in complexity so that all children are able to join in.

Numeracy: count to ten, asking each child to say a number as they stomp their stick in turn; then, add an extra beat between numbers, or count backwards; ask children to stomp their age.

Communication and language: rhythmic songs and nursery rhymes such as 'One Two Buckle My Shoe' work well with sticks; pick a word with lots of rhymes and ask children to stomp their stick while calling out a new rhyming word: cat, bat, flat.

Creative development: decorate stomp sticks with string, ribbons, chalk or paint; stomp sticks make excellent percussion instruments - beat out the rhythm of tunes by banging the sticks on the ground or against one another.

Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy: sort the sticks by length, width, species, texture or colour; ask children to show how they sorted them - in rows, lines or bundles?

Mark-making: create charcoal by wrapping the ends of sticks in foil and charring them for a few minutes on a campfire or barbecue; swish sticks through sand or mud to create pictures or words; write magic spells in the air with short sticks; use sticks to trace the lettering on signs around your setting.

Construction: from the perspective of a stick connoisseur (some might say obsessive), construction play is the most enduring kind of stick play.

Whether it's stringing sticks together to make giant picture frames, assembling wind chimes and dream catchers or engineering shelters and hidey-holes, the problem solving and language skills involved are just the start. Children gain an immense sense of achievement from making something beautiful or complex from sticks and a few simple resources, and I've seen children collaborate and show ingenuity beyond their years, in order to succeed with their project.

INSPIRATION

Check your nursery library for opportunities to initiate stick play with favourite stories such as Percy the Park Keeper by Nick Butterworth (HarperCollins), Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (Red Fox) and We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury (Walker Books).

Try these too:

• Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (Alison Green Books) - an obvious choice, but still an excellent way to inspire imaginative stick play. Stick Man lives in the family tree with his family but it's dangerous being a Stick Man. A dog wants to play with him, a swan builds her nest with him. He even ends up on a fire. Will he ever get back to the family tree?

• Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis (HarperCollins) - a beautifully designed book, celebrating the power of the imagination to transform even the most ordinary of objects into something magical. A stick is just a stick ... unless it's not a stick. From fishing rod to dragon-taming sword a small pig shows that a stick will go as far as the imagination allows.

The following are some sources of information about stick safety and ideas for stick play:

• The Stick Book by Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield (Frances Lincoln) - full of gorgeous pictures and simple, achievable stick projects

• Managing Risk in Play Provision - a free download from www.playengland.org.uk, this is the definitive guide to enabling exciting, challenging, risky play.

• Learn more about stick play at www.playlearninglife.org.uk/resources

• www.naturedetectives.org.uk - dozens of excellent downloadable posters, ideas and guidance.

STICK CHECK LISTS

Creating two 'grab and go' resource bags or boxes will help you and your children play spontaneously and safely with sticks.

One kit is retained by the adults in your setting, but contains items that you may allow children to use if appropriate; the other kit should be freely accessible to the children and placed close to the stick collection.

Children's Stick Kit might include:

• balls of string

• scissors

• chunky playground chalk

• scraps of fabric (for making flags or connecting sticks)

• masking tape

• picnic blanket

• sandpaper

Practitioners' Stick Kit might include:

• a whittling knife - learn how to use this safely

• secateurs and sharp scissors

• garden wire (rubber coated is perfect for small hands)

• stapler and staples

• junior hacksaw

• cable ties

• first-aid kit with anti-bacterial wipes or gel

SAFE STICKS

Enabling children to play independently outdoors is one of the most important ways we help them learn to keep themselves safe in the world beyond the nursery.

Supported by caring and knowledgeable adults, stick play is safe and exciting, so use a common sense approach to health and safety, asking yourself:

• What are the risks associated with this activity? What are the benefits of it?

• How likely is it that this risk will actually occur? How could we mitigate this risk?

When planning stick play, consider the following:

• What tools are appropriate for children to use? Do they know how to use them safely? Do we as adults know how to? How will we model safe practices with the tools?

• Where will we store our sticks? Will they be freely accessible? If so, what steps should we take to ensure that they don't become a hazard during general outdoor play?

• Does this activity need a written risk assessment? See the revised EYFS guidelines; from September, practitioners may use their own judgement as to whether a written risk assessment is required.

• Do we know how to light a fire safely - and, more importantly, put it out safely? What measures should we employ to ensure that children can enjoy the excitement of fire safely?

• How will we enable children to take some responsibility for their own safety? How will we ensure that these responsibilities are age appropriate?

Julie Mountain is director of Play Learning Life, www.playlearninglife.org.uk.