Your outdoor calendar: September

Activity

MAD ABOUT MEASURING

A nursery or pre-school garden is a rich mathematical environment and freely chosen play, supported by adults, is a tremendous way for children to develop their mathematical interest and understanding. A few well-chosen, well-placed resources can enhance opportunities to explore the space and use STEM language. Think about ways we measure and talk about distance and height, and curate an outdoor accessible measuring collection:

• Dozens of straight sticks, cut to various lengths. Hazel and willow are great, being ramrod-straight, plentiful and quick to replenish after cutting (coppicing). Mark 10cm, 25cm and 50cm sticks with different colours – use electricians’ tape or nail polish – and then add the appropriate number of marks on a 1m stick; for example, if your 25cm sticks are marked in red, make four red marks on the 1m stick to help children see they will need four red sticks to make 1m.
• Choose a location on your building to become the outdoor height chart and record children’s height on various milestones – first and last day at the setting, birthdays, and so on. Children will enjoy comparing the markings, so attach a simple wooden 30cm ruler to the height chart so they can do this with real maths tools.
• I liberated three trundle wheels from a school skip around ten years ago and they are always very popular resources when I take them into settings. The wheels’ satisfying click records one metre per revolution, imploring children to count along as they move. If you can’t ‘find’ some like I did, it is worth buying a couple – two or more introduce opportunities for physically active collaboration: racing, comparing clicks, slooooow trundling, and more.
• An ‘instant outdoor maths’ kit will help enrich scenarios as they arise. Mine includes: a cloth ten frame, 5m measuring tape and dressmakers’ 1m tapes, folding 1m ruler, lots of Sammy Snakes (see the Creative Star blog: https://bit.ly/3lmL68s), lengths of ‘ruler’ grosgrain ribbon (from a haberdashery), curtain rings, a chunk of chalk, a laminated A5 100 square, large playing cards, a luggage-weighing scale, blank dice, dry wipe marker… and I’m always adding to it when I spot an object with mathematical affordances.
  
  

Nature watch

LOOK OUT FOR…

Migrating birds: Millions of birds begin their autumn migrations in September. Don’t forget, plenty of birds are migrating to the UK, as well as from it. Keep a few pairs of children’s binoculars handy in the garden along with ID sheets of bird silhouettes, ready to spot geese arriving in their characteristic V-shaped flocks, and swallows and house martins leaving the UK for warmer climes in Africa. Dusk is a good time to birdwatch as they head to overnight roosts. Check out the RSPB’s excellent birdwatching resources.

Colourful berries: In the May calendar, I recommended making elderflower cordial. Now you know where your elder shrubs are, revisit them looking for the berries. Raw elderberries are edible, but they aren’t sweet like blackberries, so use them to make pigments for mark-making, or include them in an apple crumble recipe. Other berries you might spot include sloes (also edible), hawthorn, crab apples and mountain ash.

Maintenance

IT’S TIME TO…

• Make a compost heap ready to collect fallen leaves, weeds and prunings. Plastic compost bins are cheap and effective, or you can easily make your own using pallets, or even just allocate a quiet ‘spot’ in the garden to become your compost pile. Well-decomposed homemade compost will be delicious for your planting beds next year.
• Weed around the base of young trees, in planting beds and on pathways. Hand weeding is the most environmentally friendly, but if you need to use a chemical (for example on pathways), ensure it is a ‘wildlife friendly’ solution that will be safe for children on Monday if it is used on a Friday.
  
  

Story to share

Children at your setting will have been born overseas and migrated to the UK themselves. There is a huge choice of stories about migrating animals and people, so I’m suggesting two this month:

The Turtle Dove’s Journey by Madeleine Dunphy and illustrated by Marlo Garnsworty follows the bird’s migration from Suffolk to Mali. The prose may be a little old for pre-schoolers, but the stunning pictures and your interpretation of the story will be fascinating. There is also a map and an account of a real, tracked migration of a turtle dove.

Coming to England by Floella Benjamin and illustrated by Diane Ewen tells the Windrush migration story from Dame Floella’s perspective. Many of the scenarios lend themselves to being reimagined in your setting’s garden – from the fruit market in Trinidad to the sea voyage and arrival in a busy city. Perfect timing for Black History Month in October.

A new project

PORTABLE FENCE PANELS

Old fence panels, pallets and even the slats from a bed can be repurposed into portable panels to use around the garden, but you’ll need to be a confident woodworker to try this project. They make simple barriers – to create a cosy corner for stories, for example, or to provide babies with a safe cuddle and crawl space outdoors. The key to making portable panels yourself is to ensure a low centre of gravity, so they can’t topple over if a child pulls up on them. This means creating a heavy lower half of the panel and including heavy or wide ‘feet’ for stability.

You’ll need:

• Woodworking tools – drill and drill bits, jigsaw, screws, screwdriver, pencil and tape measure, sander or sandpaper, paint or wood preservative.
• Old fence panels – trellis or palisade style are best, bed slats or pallets, heavy lengths of wood for the base.
• Your panels should be low enough for children to see over – the idea isn’t to create an impenetrable barrier, but instead to allow you to ‘shape’ various spaces and places around the garden. So start by jigsawing the fence panels or pallets to size – 75cm is a good ‘finished’ height.
• If you are using pallets, trim them in half across the slats, which will make two ‘fence panels’ and leave a narrow section of pallet with several solid block spacers. Sand the exposed edges of the two panels. The ‘bottom’ edges of the panels will have block spacers, so are very heavy, and this helps to keep the panels stable. Use four of the ‘spacers’ left over from cutting the pallet in half to make perpendicular feet – screw them to the base of the panel so that it stands firmly.
• If you are using bed slats, or other pre-cut lengths of wood, sandwich the slats between two slats at the ‘top’ of the panel and two at the ‘bottom’. Saw one of the slats in half, and use them to make ‘feet’ on each end of the bottom of the panel. Where you have a three-slat ‘sandwich’, the feet slats should be turned on their side before screwing to the panel itself. Sand all exposed and sawn edges.
• If you are using a repurposed fence panel, you may need to trim the height and remove some of the horizontal ‘arris’ rails as these can be too heavy for a portable panel. If the panel already has side posts and a kickboard at the base, screw feet into the kickboard in several places to ensure it remains stable. Sand exposed edges.
• Apply paint or preservative to your panels to extend their life.
  
  

Resources

BEG, BUY OR BORROW…

Construction resources: ask parents to donate surplus timber for your construction area.

Children will make use of any sawn timber they have access to, but you could ask particularly for long planks (that you can then saw to size), pieces of ‘marine’ plywood that can cope with being outdoors, square or rectangular section battens, chunks of moulded skirting board and floorboards or decking.

Many families have been busy with home improvements over lockdown – or instead of going on holiday – so there should be plenty of leftovers!

Also, don’t forget to check skips and ask local builders and timber merchants for offcuts.

Looking ahead

MAKE PLANS FOR…

• Keep an eye on your local conker trees – it will soon be time to harvest them.
• Start collecting tealights, reflective objects and glow-in-the-dark resources to create a spooky garden for Halloween and a garden of lights for Diwali.
• Apple Day on 21 October is an opportunity to try apple recipes and test a range of British varieties. Many towns celebrate with a community apple pressing event.
  
  

Risk assessment

WATCH OUT FOR…

Real-life construction materials offer rich experiences, not least because they come with inherent risks.

• Splinters are obviously top of the list and cannot be eliminated entirely. Ensure you are clear about your setting’s splinter policy before introducing sawn timber or pallets to outdoor play.
• Offer a variety of weights of wood – some that children can easily pick up and carry themselves, others that require two or more sets of hands. Remind children to help one another and to bend from the knees, not the back, when reaching to pick up heavy objects.
  
  

‘Our Garden in 2021’

FOR THE RECORD…

September is a time of change for many families, so add images, sketches and comments about the garden’s transition from summer into autumn to your floorbook.

If you have spotted migrating geese or house martins, try to capture a photo from the garden and add an ID image and the date spotted.

Add your elderberry and apple crumble recipe and include pictures of children’s faces as they taste-test the ‘raw’ berries!

Take daily photographs of the leaves on one of your trees – watch them turn from rich August green through to yellowy brown as October approaches.