Your Outdoor Calendar: October

Activity

IMAGINATIVE AUTUMN

Springtime is often thought of as the ‘creative’ time of year, with nature renewing itself and people looking forward to longer days and warmer weather. But nature in autumn is working just as hard to shut itself down, and changes can be observed daily. Use the colours and smells of autumn as a creative springboard. Here are a few ideas:

Hold an Autumn Colour Day: ask parents to send children into the setting dressed in browns, oranges and yellows. Take big paintbrushes and rolls of lining paper outdoors and paint with autumnal colours – frame the artworks with sticks.

Taste, test and create recipes from autumnal flavours such as mushrooms, apples, sloes, elderberries and sweet chestnuts roasted over a campfire.

Gather up all the leaves into a huge pile – then launch yourself into them from a tower of crates or hollow blocks. When children are done doing that, create pathways, lines and shapes with the leaves, or place them around children lying on the ground to make leafy silhouettes.

Make paint pigments from autumn berries – squash blackberries and elderberries through a sieve or tea strainer to make ‘ink’ and use it in feather quills or for hand- and-finger-printing. The leftovers in the sieve can be added to fruit smoothies.

Make wind streamers with multiple strips of autumnal-coloured fabrics, positioned as high above head height as possible, so they flap and bounce in the autumn breezes. As always, source sheets and cheap fabrics from charity shops or ask parents for donations.

Use some of these charity shop bargains to make camouflaged autumnal dens: mix up browns and greens with piles of leaves and sticks – can children hide themselves away and be absolutely silent? What can children see when nature doesn’t realise there is anyone else around?

Nature watch

LOOK OUT FOR…

Fungi: Gorgeous little mushrooms – and some not so tiny – sprout up all over during autumn. If there aren’t any in your own garden, plan a trip to your local green space and check on trees and under shrubs on the journey there. Pick a few samples (wear gloves!) to bring back to the setting; slice them up so that children can inspect them using jewellers’ loupes (small magnifying glasses).

Autumn colours: Keep a record of the changing colours of leaves and berries – collect paint swatch cards (you can now download these from DIY stores!) to see if you can match the autumn colours with them.

Autumn smells: Sit quietly in the garden and inhale deeply. Morning autumn smells and afternoon ones are different, as the temperature and local climate affects smells, so try to have a little ‘smelly’ mindfulness twice a day.

Maintenance

IT’S TIME TO…

• Prune and tidy: Many of your trees and shrubs will have enjoyed the wet, warm summer; now’s the time to tidy them up for winter, when they rest and recuperate. Check out the RHS website, which has comprehensive details of what to prune, when and how. Getting it right now means strong, resilient growth in the spring.
• Plant spring-flowering bulbs: Autumn is the time to plant daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and crocuses ready for a vivid display next spring. They’re easy for young children to plant: dig a small hole, pop the bulb in (root end down, pointy end up) and refill with the soil. They need very little aftercare when planted in the ground, although pot-planted bulbs will need more watering and weeding. Children will want to pick pretty, fragrant flowers, so be as abundant with the bulbs as you can afford to be now. By spring, there will be plenty to pick and use, as well as just admire ‘in situ’.
  
  

Story to share

Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn andGoodbye Autumn, Hello Winter, both by Kenard Pak. These two American books are part of a series of four and worth reading together to really get a sense of how quickly autumn comes and goes. In each book, a young girl takes a gentle stroll through countryside and town, observing and noting the characteristics of the seasons. In the first book, she takes her dog, who pokes its nose into everything; in the second, her brother comes with her. The text is simple, the illustrations elegant but detailed, and the whole set would be worth investing in.

An excellent list of autumn-themed books can also be found at: www.schoolreadinglist.co.uk.

A new project

GETTING PARENTS INVOLVED IN OUTDOORS

Whether you’re a school-based provision, a wraparound care setting or a pack-away, parents can be crucial to the success of your outdoor space. It’s often difficult to motivate parents to help fundraise, but there are two other ways to involve parents that will have a significant impact on the quality of outdoor play. It’s worth persevering with both, because once there is momentum to help, that support becomes almost self-sustaining.

Share the special nature of outdoor play with parents. Parents won’t be invested in outdoor learning unless they understand and therefore appreciate its true value. To build their understanding of the role it plays in development, plan a series of interventions over the autumn term, starting now:

• Circulate material that explores the importance of outdoor play – including your own outdoor play policy, articles from Nursery World, websites and prolific tweeters, and a list of books you have in the setting that parents can borrow to learn more.
• Hold an Outdoor Play Open Day. Choose a weekend or half-term morning and set up an outdoor Stay ‘n’ Play so that parents can see their children ‘in action’ outdoors and play alongside them. Encourage parents to hear how you interact with children outdoors – get them to think about the language you use, and the gestures and facial expressions that speak to children about their strength and competency outdoors.
• Point out the developmental benefits of various parts of the garden, picking and choosing what you focus on based on your knowledge of the child and their parent. For example, a parent might be worried about counting, so offer evidence of how playing with stones, cones, leaves and other natural materials can help children develop confident number ordering or subitising.
• Add a specific ‘outdoor learning’ gallery to your website, perhaps with a monthly focus on an area of learning or connected to the changing months – these monthly ‘calendars’ would make a good starting point for ideas.

Arrange parent working parties to keep on top of maintenance. It does take time for a new routine to establish itself, so a termly or half-termly weekend morning working party might be sparsely attended to begin with – but keep on trying! A session that children can also attend makes it much more feasible for parents, so have a member of the team looking after them so adults can focus on jobs.

• Have a list of short, simple jobs – things that any parent can do and will only take 10 or 15 minutes. This allows parents to ‘drop in’ and not feel they have to stay for the whole morning – which often puts them off.
• Provide hot drinks and make sure you have sourced the equipment needed, or parents who could be helpful but don’t have gardening equipment will rule themselves out.

Plan one ‘big’ job each time: pruning, planting, repainting a shed, blowing leaves, clearing overgrown paths, pressure-washing play equipment or resources…

Resources

BEG, BUY OR BORROW…

Jewellers’ loupes: These are a fabulous resource, and one I always recommend to settings and schools. These tiny magnifying glasses are designed to be placed right in front of the eye, and right next to the object being viewed – a great fine-motor-skill, manual-dexterity activity in itself.

Loupes are perfect for examining fungi, leaves, flowers and tree bark – and children’s own fingerprints! You should be able to source them for £3-£5 each, and I hang mine on brightly coloured lanyards so they don’t get lost around the garden.

Looking ahead

MAKE PLANS FOR…

• Collect leaves and sticks to make hedgehog and frog habitats with. Hedgehogs will shortly begin hibernating, and peaceful piles of leaves are one of their favourite winter homes. Choose an out-of-the-way place and put up signs asking children not to play there. If you have your leaves and sticks in place by the end of October, you could be lucky and have new residents in there soon afterwards.
• Any sticks you don’t plan to use for hedgehog homes can be set aside for Bonfire Night on 5 November. If you don’t have a fire circle, borrow or buy the biggest turkey roasting tin you can find. Consider buying a few sachets of Mystical Fire – the powder creates mysterious colours in the flames and is a magical experience after dark.
  
  

Risk assessment

WATCH OUT FOR…

Parent Working Parties:Having volunteers working in your setting is probably not in your usual risk assessments, so discuss what additional measures you might need to include, such as access to hygiene facilities, safeguarding (for example, parents are responsible for their own children), an on-duty first-aider and security of materials subject to GDPR – but don’t let all this put you off!

Fungi and berries: I know I’ve mentioned this in a previous calendar, but it’s worth a reminder. Not all berries and fungi are poisonous, but it’s often hard to distinguish between those that are and those that aren’t. The rule is not to eat any berry an adult hasn’t said is safe (for example, blackberries) and ‘look but don’t touch’ for any fungi. Use disposable gloves when handling fungi for later investigation.

‘Our Garden in 2021’

FOR THE RECORD…

Share your year outdoor floorbook with parents when you invite them in to support outdoor play. It will help them understand the value of outdoor learning and play and demonstrate the impact they themselves can have.

Don’t forget to collect examples of leaves changing colour and add those to the October pages of your floorbook. If possible, collect one leaf a week from a specific tree, pressing them into the book for a permanent record of their transformation over the month.