Activity
IN A TIGHT SPOT
Lots of settings, whether offering year-round or term time only provision, will have been reflecting on practice over the quieter summer months, perhaps thinking about how to become more efficient in setting up and packing away and making better use of familiar resources. Now would be an excellent time to plan and begin to implement ‘responsibility routines’ outdoors.
One of the factors that contributes to the higher levels of physicality and risk-taking in the Japanese settings I have studied was the presence of shared responsibilities and clear routines:
- Every setting had attractive outdoor handwashing facilities. The troughs were appropriately sized, colourful and located adjacent to building entrances. All children and adults washed their hands, with soap, before going back indoors after play.
- I’ve written about the Japanese kindergarten indoor/outdoor shoe routines previously (https://bit.ly/3QqqHve). In brief, changing into outdoor shoes for outdoor play makes a clear distinction between the kinds of learning taking place indoors and outdoors – and keeps much of the dirt and dust outdoors where it belongs, making cleaning up indoors much more straightforward.
- Tidying up outdoors is a shared responsibility and looked quite different to what we might expect to see in the UK. Not all resources were tidied away, but those that are have labelled spaces and crucially, tidy-up time isn't that last ten minutes of the day. Instead, each adult and their key children had one responsibility and they could carry it out at any time in the last half an hour of outdoor time, meaning children could tidy up and then continue to play outdoors for another 20 minutes. The ‘pain’ of tidy-up time was alleviated because it didn't signal the end of outdoor play, just the end of play with that particular resource.
Personal, social and emotional springboards
September in the education calendar is a time for fresh starts and renewal; in the Christian tradition, these ideas are associated with Easter, and one of the many ancient customs carried out around that time is ‘clypping the church’. It's not common these days, but the Peak District town I grew up in still does it every year and the concept behind it is very transferable to our schools and settings.
Quite simply, clypping involves a community joining hands to surround the building and grounds (or churchyard) with love. Everyone with a stake in the building and what it stands for joins in – so you would invite parents, neighbours, feeder schools or settings, local businesses or organisations you interact with, and of course your own staff and children. In urban settings it might be impossible to encircle the whole site, so instead, make as large a ring as you can within the garden or surrounding as much of the building as is accessible.
At St Mary's in Wirksworth, a prayer would be said during clypping, and at least one hymn shared. Why not introduce clypping to your annual event calendar as a way of welcoming in new parents and children and cementing older friendships and connections?
STEM
SEPTEMBER SPRINGBOARDS
Plan an annual maintenance calendar for your children to help look after your outdoor space. There are many online guides to caring for gardens around the year, and Nursery World writers have provided lots of advice on this in the magazine – search the archive to find out more. The list of tasks that can be shared and planned for each month is pretty much endless (sadly!), but here are a few starters – use them as a springboard to STEM-focused discussions:
- Examine timber structures looking for splinters, rotting wood and wobbly bits. Give children sanding blocks so they can help sort out problems.
- Observe overgrown planting and discuss how to manage plants that have become too large for their pots or their designated area. Burgon and Ball make a natty pair of micro-secateurs that are perfect for very small hands, allowing children to undertake adult tasks such as pruning.
- Test the strength of swings, ropes and other play equipment and look for loose fixtures and fittings; talk about why it's important the equipment is strong.
- Walk all the pathways looking for loose slabs, cracks with weeds growing through, potholes and uneven surfaces. Ask children whether these issues necessarily make the pathways ‘unsafe’ – or are they just trickier to walk on?
- On a rainy day, go out with umbrellas and check downpipes, gutters and water butts – do they leak? Can you capture the water somehow, and use it on the garden?
Encourage children to take photos of problem areas so you can address the issue together – for example, sanding rough wood – and reflect on how they helped with truly important tasks.
NATURAL LEARNING
September and the beginning of autumn heralds many changes in the natural world; most seed-bearing plants are reaching the end of their ‘dispersal’ period; leaves are beginning to dry out and turn orange or brown; this year's young mammals are developing their independence ready to leave ‘home’. There is much to observe and talk about in the setting's garden or in local green spaces.
- Look out for migrating birds. Many will be perching on telegraph wires, in trees and on buildings ready to head off to warmer climes, and others will be arriving. There isn't the same migration ‘urgency’ in autumn as there is in spring – when birds are getting ready to breed. But children should be able to spot and recognise the silhouettes of geese, swallows, various gulls and even birds of prey overhead, as these species head for their winter homes.
- Children will be able to spot lots of nuts and berries during September and you may even still have blackberries to pick. Elderberries will be popping out in huge ‘umbels’ and make excellent cordial, simmered and reduced down with sugar and water; it's conker season so collect as many as you can to see you through the winter for loose-parts play; collect hazelnuts and roast them or lightly toast them in a pan – they’re delicious!
- There are still plenty of moths, butterflies and grasshoppers around – go on a commando style crawl through long grass to spot these up close – but watch out for fungi. I’ll write a bit more about fungi in the next calendar, but for now, remind children not to touch, however beautiful or intriguing the mushroom is.
active stories
Look What I Found in the Woods is a picture book published by the National Trust and tells the tale of children on an adventurous nature walk to collect treasure. Alongside the story there are nature facts and picture-spotting counting suggestions – e.g. two squirrels, three bumblebees. It's an ideal starter story before taking a walk to a local park or wood, before a series of Forest School sessions or even to introduce new children to your own outdoor space.
September top tips
- If you’ve allowed your grass to grow long over the summer, make sure that flowers have turned to seed and, in turn, plenty of seeds have dispersed, before you make the first cut of the autumn. Collect any remaining seedheads to explore: make size and shape comparisons; dry them out on trays and use for artworks; plant fresh seeds in compost to see if you can raise new seedlings in a sunny window; save some seeds, in separate envelopes, to plant out over winter or early spring; examine them up close using whichever magnifiers you have available.
- If you have access to a hazel or willow plantation, September is the start of the coppicing season. Coppicing means cutting straight stems near the base of the plant, encouraging it to grow new growth and providing wood for your own projects. Fresh coppiced stems are easy to whittle using vegetable peelers and their flexibility allows their use in a myriad of projects such as weaving and fence-making. Alternatively, allow your stems to dry out a little and use them later in the year for den-building, basket-making or construction play.
communication and language springboards
Opinions on the value of complicated indoor displays and signage differ, but for what it's worth, I like to see outdoor resources labelled in several different ways. Labelling storage containers and units has more than one single purpose – firstly, it obviously helps communicate the contents to children, so they are able to source what they need. But of equal value is the message labels send about taking responsibility for tidying up and keeping track of resources. Many Japanese kindergartens labelled storage units with photographs of the resources contained within, but often they also included drawn illustrations or clip art of the same items, plus the name of the resource in Japanese and Latin script. They also used colour coding and silhouettes of the objects to help children match shapes and resources. Why not embark on a labelling odyssey this autumn?
Planning ahead
- Exploring fire in early years can be richly rewarding and there are several festivals and events over autumn that incorporate fire in symbolic ways. As nights draw in and temperatures drop, cultures around the world reintroduce fire into everyday life, celebrating its importance in keeping communities together and safe. Diwali and Bonfire Night are just two obvious opportunities to plan ahead for fire activities; as is recalling the Great Fire of London. Health and safety note: as I write this, it's been an incredibly dry and hot summer so take extra time to risk-assess the location for any fire in the garden, even if it's one you regularly use and even if it's been rainy recently.
