Summer Recap part 2

 In my last post I covered some of the changes I had made to our outdoor play area. I mentioned that I had built a new roof over the little house in the corner of the yard and that moving the bus benches here made this a favourite sit spot all summer. However, I did not have a picture to include in my last post – but I do now;

I also promised to write more about some of our summer activities so that is what this post is for. Although International Mud Day occurs before my summer vacation, I never write about it until after. I didn’t write a dedicated ‘Mud Day 2022’ post but I can’t have a summer activities post without at least a couple mud day photos. This particular group was highly motivated to wash muddy toys so much of the activity was ‘mud on, mud off, repeat’.

The building area of the yard was popular all summer – surprisingly more popular than the water area or the climbing wall. Often, we had all eight of the children wanting to play here at the same time though they still preferred to create separate small ‘homes’ in a ‘town’ rather than work together on a single, large structure like other groups have in the past.

The gravel/digging area, of course, was always popular though usually only for smaller groups at one time. It was interesting to note that, no matter what the activity was, these two were always choosing to play together. The oldest and the youngest in the group – nine years difference in age – but they played so well together all summer. Observing friendships like this is one of the things I like best about having a mixed age group.

We also started a collection of ‘nature stuff’ to use to make mandalas. Some of the children only liked the ‘collecting’ part, others preferred simply sorting the items that were collected on our walks. Only a few actually seemed to enjoy creating the mandalas though.

As usual, we went to parks almost every day to play tag or other group activities that require a big open space that we can’t do in my yard. I almost never take the children to playstructures but we do love the climbers they have at St John’s Park.

Whenever the basketball court was empty, the children always wanted to play line tag.

Some of the children tried cutting tree cookies. Even though we only used small branches this was a surprisingly difficult/time consuming activity. The children who were persistent enough to cut all the way through were very proud of their achievement – so was I 

Fantastic Summer!

Mud & More

June 29th is International Mud Day – something we celebrate every year.  This year the school-age children were thrilled that there was no school so they were able to join in the day’s activities.  I had the water table set up full of dirt – it was up to the children to add the water and make the mud;

I also put out another bin with plain water for hand washing but some of the children enjoyed making repeated trips from mud to hand washing and back so really there were TWO mud bins.  I cleaned the hand washing bin and added fresh water several times but it always looked like this;

Because of this;

We were outside all morning and the children took breaks from mud play to build bridges;

play tag, and capture things like this;

There was a five minute downpour which was very exciting after I reassured the children that we would NOT have to go back inside.  We do often play in the rain but because we didn’t have raincoats and boots some of the children were concerned that we were not properly dressed for the weather.  However, it was Mud Day and everyone had clean clothes waiting inside so  all that rain was just a bonus It created some muddy puddles and the tarp became a slip and slide;

and the mud table got soupier;

Then, one of the children notice that the first tomato has begun to grow.  Three of the children decided to ‘watch’ it for nearly 20 minutes ‘waiting for it to turn red’.

I think maybe it will be ready when they return in two weeks – after my vacation.  I wonder if they will remember to check, or will they be too interested in exploring all the other new things – my ‘vacation to-do list’ is two pages long.  I love vacation time but the return of the children is so exciting too!

Mud Day 2012

My vacation has officially begun so for the next two weeks it will be very quiet around here – except for the sounds of power tools and the odd bit of ‘language’ that occurs during renovations.  However, I wanted to first share a few of the highlights of our celebration of International Mud Day.
Of course being the last day before the holidays also meant that 75% of the children were absent but that didn’t stop the rest of us from playing with mud. 

First we had a discussion about what ‘international’ means and then we started with dirt — feeling the texture and breaking up lumps;

Then we added the water and mixed;

It is during experiences like this that I miss having an area with lawn to run around on.  Mud and water makes the deck very slippery and we would loose all the mud in the gravel area.  We added a few toys to the mud bin;

And tried shaping and moulding the mud;

There were some cool hand prints;

The water table was originally going to be another mud station but with so few children we didn’t need the extra space so I just filled it with water which ultimately became more popular than the mud bin.  They love playing with water more than anything else.   The first bit of mud introduced to one side of the water table instantly turn the water black which prompted a half hour of “Come to the dark side” play.

In the end the dark side prevailed;

It was a fantastic way to spend our last day before vacation and we topped it off with a special snack – homemade frozen yogurt (plain yogurt + frozen fruit + blender);