We have been slowly deconstructing the sad excuse for a backyard of our new-to-us house over the past few weeks; pulling out a whole lot of pointless bushes and cutting down quite a number of trees (don’t ask me what actual plants any of them are as I have absolutely no idea). All this hard and messy work will be worth it in the end as we will have plenty of space for what I hope will become a fantastic family backyard.
Part of our plan for the new backyard included a nice, big purpose-built sandpit however Immy has been having so much fun playing in the soil and dirty sand that I am starting to think a nice, dirty digging patch might be a better choice!
She is loving the demolition process and happily pulls out weeds and role plays cutting down trees, oh, and taking her giraffe to eat the leaves of fallen trees! Because that is what giraffes do, you know?!?
We have collected a heap of seed pods off the fallen trees and they are proving useful for all sorts of play.
And with all of this time playing in nature it is inevitable that we will come across all manner of backyard beast. Fortunately so far we haven’t come across anything more sinister then the odd bee buzzing around and more then our fair share of snails. Snails who then have the privilege and full enjoyment of playing in a toddler made obstacle course.
And with all of this time to study snails, why not draw a picture of them also? This was Immy’s spontaneous drawing made after a morning involving lots of snail observation and backyard nature ‘play.’
What have your children been enjoying outdoors this week?
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Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
We hired someone to just rip all the nasty stuff out, and we're left with a blank canvas and a lone apple tree in the middle. We plan to have a sandpit (getting rid of the one that is currently there that neighbourhood cats pooed in! Urgh) and a mud pool. I want to somehow line the mud pool with plastic at the bottom so as to conserve water usage and make the mud stay wet longer.
My kids have found a lot of grasshoppers, moths, butterflies (so many of them, and they sit on the grass, so the kids get a really good look), slugs, these little red bugs, and these insanely huge brown cicadas (I think). Also spiders.
They play with their cat outside, and before the fence was put up, enjoyed watching the chickens from next door whilst they ate dinner inside. Soon we'll get our own chickens and a dog.
We're planning to grow a lot of fruit trees, because I want my kids to be able to climb up and pick different fruits, and sit on the grass and eat them happily:)
I really don't like bugs of any description so I was worried about a whole lot of things, ants crawling onto his blanket, bee stings, him getting bitten by something whilst I was letting him 'stand' on the grass. But nothing bad happened at all. Maybe the outdoors aren't such a scary place!!