Vacation 2018

As usual I spent my two week ‘vacation’ working on projects and as usual I didn’t manage to complete ALL the things I had hoped to.  However, this year I DID spend my entire vacation outdoors because I was working on the backyard play space. It was wonderful!

I’m back to work today and the children should be arriving soon so here’s a very quick post about the mostly completed yard.  First, the view to the SW corner as you leave the house;

Down the stairs and looking to the SE corner;

From the SE corner looking to the NW corner;

From the SW corner looking to the NE corner;

This is one of my favourite areas – my little hideaway under the cedars;

Here is the old tipi with newly added storage areas and camouflage cover;

I added ‘castle battlements’ to the wall between the gravel area and the garden and attached the drums here too. The table was made from a spool and some tile samples – supplies that were donated by parents;

The stump circle containing the ‘digging area’ was moved to one edge of the gravel area to make room for a ‘construction zone’.  All the building supplies are now stored conveniently under the willow;

The fence panel between the bark area and the car port is now the ‘art wall’ – although not quite complete yet – the planters will hold art supplies and paper etc can be clipped to the fence;

I also have a large hammock that hangs in this area when we want to relax 

The biggest part of this project is not visible –  the removal of the old deck and walkway – there were sections of it that were rotting and unsafe, it was 18 years old.  I couldn’t just trash the whole thing though, any sections of wood that were still good were of course salvaged and reused.

Total monetary cost of this entire project was $350 (mulch, stone, sunshade etc) and a few hundred hours of labour in 30 degree Celsius weather.  Perfect vacation.

Mud Day 2018

The problem with having Mud Day on the Friday before my vacation begins is that then I’m too busy working on my vacation projects to write about anything.  So, since my ‘vacation’ is nearly over and my projects are almost complete here’s a very quick post about June 29, 2018.

The weather forecast said there was a chance of rain and there was a tiny bit of rain before we got outside – we wouldn’t have minded if it had continued.  Once outside, the children immediately ran to check out the pool full of semi-dry soil;

Some were curious why it was only dirt but then I asked them if they were certain it was only dirt.  They dug deeper…

Surprise!

It took much longer than I expected for them to find all the ‘dinosaur bones‘ hidden in the dirt so I didn’t bother bringing out the new activity cards – today the mud play was their main focus – I’ll introduce the card activities another day.

The children were becoming less interested in playing in the pool of dirt and seemed to prefer playing in the bins of water meant for washing the dirt off the bones.

So, I changed it up a bit…

Some of the children liked this much better;

Later we added some corn flour to the mud to make mud dough which the older children enjoyed playing with all afternoon while the littles napped;

As I watched the children engaged in their mud day activities I was already making plans for Mud Day 2019.  I knew that one of my vacation projects was removing the old deck – where we were currently playing with mud – but I also knew that there would still be space for mud play and so much more.

You though, will have to wait until after my vacation is over and I’ve finished all my projects before you get to see the new outdoor play space.