Plank

Can I flip it?

Yes I can!

Yesterday, Danny got home from school and found that the strong wind had finished off the demolition job he'd begun on his den and the bits of timber were lying scattered about. After a bit of discussion about whether a big bad wolf had come to "huff and puff it" while he was out, he moved on to some very entertaining rubber-duck-flipping. He put a short plank across another piece of wood like a seesaw, carefully placed a little blue duck on one end, and stamped hard on the other. It was surprisingly effective! The rubber duck soared high into the air in a very satisfactory way and he kept up with this game for quite some time. He also tried with a ball, but found that the ball rolled off the plank before he could get to the other end to jettison it. Eventually he stamped so hard the plank came up and hit him on the head- lesson learned!
It reminded me of that tv program "Whose Line is it Anyway?" where the contestants were given a prop and had to think of as many uses for it as they could. Planks have been used for a lot of stuff in our garden, some of which I know I've mentioned already in this blog and others a bit more random, so here's a run down of a few!

• Dens:

Making the plank roof.

This will be the chimney!

Inside the plank tent.

Danny's most recent, and not very wolf-proof den, was made out of bits of board with planks to make the roof. He even filled it with leaves to make it cosy. But an easier and more effective one they made involved creating a tent out of a bedspread hung over a plank and weighted down with stones along the edges. As you can see, there was not quite room to stand up, but again they filled it with random bedding and toys and made it all homely.

• See-saws 

When's it going to tip?

A like-a-bike challenge

See-saws in parks are generally too big for little kids- their legs don't touch the ground and they're not heavy enough to make their end go down, which means poor mummy has to put in most of the effort. But a plank across a log gives the same effect, although it is a bit less stable! Walking over a low seesaw can feel quite risky because they're never quite sure where the tipping point will be, and biking over it is fun too because you suddenly tip and roll.

Martin made this temporary see-saw for the boys and it worked really well, tho looking at the picture now I can't believe they didn't keep tumbling off! They definitely had lots of fun with it:

• Balancing on and jumping off

I talked about using planks for balancing in my post on gross motor skills. We've used fixed ones and movable ones at various different heights and the boys have gained a lot of confidence physically from learning to walk along them. They also love jumping off of course!

Woooah!

It's a long way down!

That's more like it.

• Ramps 

We've had lots of plank ramps for endless wheeled toys to drive up and down, for bikes to do jumps over, and even for the kids to climb up.

• Tool practice

For small boys, there is nothing better than to be allowed to use real tools. The boys were allowed to play with bits of timber while Martin was constructing part of the climbing frame, and really enjoyed banging in nails and screwing in screws. It was great for their fine motor skills and they managed not to injure themselves or each other because they took the task so seriously, having been given a health and safety briefing about the responsibility of handling real tools correctly by Daddy!

• Other randoms

Zac, being a very keen draw-er has used the balance planks as an outdoor desk.

Modelling the soggy-trousers look

Art in the long grass.

Danny once spent a lot of time being a surfer by lying on a plank and shouting "paddle... paddle... pop-up!" before falling off onto the grass and pretending to be eaten by a shark! Plus they both used the plank as a cat walk when their big sister became a model and they thought they'd rather like to do some modelling too!
And if, like us, you're likely to leave a plank lying around on the grass for days after you've finished playing with it you can investigate what happens to the grass it covers and which creatures set up home underneath it.
So there you go. It's even possible to be creative with  something as basic as a plank of wood. What else could we try?

Toy coconut shy.

Plank riding?!

Here's a clip of the professional prop-guys to make you chuckle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrEWIF9RclE&list=PL5C

flowers.

Take time to smell the roses.

One thing I love about my boys is that they can be really enthusiastic about ANYTHING.
I'm dreading the day when they decide that enthusiasm is not cool and that only the few things which their peers dictate are "sick" (or whatever the word may be by then) are allowed to be discussed with any overt interest.
A case in point is flowers! The boys really appreciate them and will happily point out how beautiful they are, or that they smell delicious. It's really endearing... and I can't see it lasting!

We were lucky enough to have a week in France just before Easter, and the French countryside had done a much better job than ours of noticing that it is Spring.
One evening the boys played outside in an adjoining field until after sundown, and then came to get us to show what they'd been up to. They'd made a "beautiful hedge" by threading it with dandelions they'd picked in the field. It had kept them occupied for ages and they were really pleased with their handiwork, which was indeed surprisingly effective!


I have mentioned before that I am not an avid gardener. When we moved in to our house the garden had lots of rose bushes. My husband is not a fan of roses, he objects to being grabbed by the thorns, and he promptly dug up most of them. As a compromise we didn't put them straight in the compost, but replanted them around our gravel drive. I'm glad we did because they have flourished out there and the boys have enjoyed the multi-sensory experience of burying their nose in the soft petals and inhaling the amazing scent.

Rose petal confetti.

Plus when each flower goes over, they love to do the dead heading and throw the petals up into the air to make a colourful shower like confetti. The local pre-school once took all the children to the church to enact a wedding, and as they walked back up the lane past our house Zac and I showered them with rose petals, which swirled about in the wind like a snowstorm. The kids loved it!

I'm getting married!

 I remember my cousin and I trying to make perfume as children by mashing roses in water. I seem to remember it smelt ok when it was fresh but went a sinister colour fairly rapidly.

Much taller than me!

Of the flowers we have grown ourselves, the most successful from the boys' point of view have definitely been the sunflowers, because they mostly get MASSIVE. It still seems magic to me that from the tiny seed you plant you get a monsterous flower with a million seed of its own. And the pattern of the seeds themselves is a work of art if you let the flowers dry out.

We made a flower out of sunflower heads.

I loved our wildflower patch too. It was a big splash of colour in our mostly green garden and gave loads of opportunities to watch the insects at work. (see more in my posts on minibeasts and growing things!)

Watching the creatures in the wildflowers.

Busy buzzy bumble bee.

Appreciating the "butterfly bush"

 And the boys thought it was a novel thing to do to eat the nasturtium flowers we grew in it:

The other lovely thing about flowers is that they're another way to mark the passing seasons. From the first snowdrops suggesting winter might be nearly over, to the vibrant daffodils trumpeting in the spring, bluebells hinting summer is on its way, and poppies celebrating the sunshine it's another way for children to notice how things change but repeat across the years.

I'm watering the "daffadeals!"

The scent of spring.

Poppies painting the countryside

A walk through the bluebell woods.

Summer Meadow wanderings.

Ok, so I think you might have gathered that some of the boys' enthusiasm for flowers comes from me. I am called Daisy after all. They've made me enthusiastic about combine harvesters, I've made them exclaim over flowers. I think being enthusiastic and appreciative of the little things in life is probably one of the greatest gifts we can give each other.

My little flower fairy!

Flowery hats!

 Just a little update! Although this post was written over a year ago, the boys are still enthralled when they see a beautiful flowery scene! We've spent lots of time visiting the local bluebell woods this spring, and last weekend went to the Rhododendron gardens at Bowood. The whole place echoed to the sound of the two of them racing around exclaiming over all the different colours and proclaiming which ones smelled lovely too.

Hunting for orchids in a local meadow...

...because they're GORGEOUS!

field

Among the field of barley.

I've got a nagging feeling that this blog has a major flaw. (Probably several actually, I'm not really a writer!) The trouble is, I'm writing it in the hopes that it might give people a couple of cheap and easy ideas for ways to entertain their kids when they're stuck for things to do.
But that isn't how, or perhaps why these activities worked for us. I didn't plan to do them, I didn't even think of most of them, generally the kids just invented their own amusement with what was to hand, and being a big kid myself, I joined in. I'm not sure whether they would have approached these activities with the same enthusiasm if I'd said, for example, "Come on, we're going to spend half an hour jumping off the windowsill onto a mattress!"
My post today is about a field and I've written it to explain that often, the less you plan the better.

We spent a lot of time last summer enjoying one particular field, not because I thought it would be educational, healthy, fun or anything else, (in fact I got quite tired of trekking back and forth to it, inspite of my new-found and unexpected appreciation of farm machines!) It was because the kids decided it was the most engrossing thing in the world.




It takes us about 10 minutes to walk to the field, allowing for a bit of swinging on the goal posts on the rec, checking the state of the conker tree, hiding in the maize field on the way etc.
The field itself is not that spectacular- it is massive and flat, although it does have a huge dead tree in it which always looks impressive if a bit sinister. Last year the farmer was growing barley in it, and from the beginning of the summer holidays we made an almost daily pilgrimage to see if the combine harvester was there yet. And then one day, it was!                                                   

"It's a John Deere, with its header up!"

Cue massive excitement and lots of straw-based celebrations!

I have to confess, although I don't think I had ever given a combine more than a passing glance until about two years ago, the boys excitement is totally infectious. Standing at the edge of the field watching that monsterous machine pass by, spewing straw out the back and spilling grain out of its long arm is a pretty amazing experience. The noise and the power of the thing is almost overwhelming. We watched them harvesting the barley for A LONG TIME and then followed the tractor and trailer to where it was taking the grain to a big shed over the road. The farmer was more than happy to let the boys go in and see the mountains of grain that were piling up inside.
I foolishly mentioned that combines often work into the night to get the job done, and at nearly ten o'clock that evening the boys reappeared downstairs, where we were dropping off in front of the tele, and demanded we go back to the field in the dark to see the combine with its lights on. Sadly it was snoozing too but the adventure of running through the maize field with torches in the cool dusk was enough to make the trip worth while.

And of course, that wasn't the end of the story, because next we had to trek to see the bailer, dropping straw bails out of its rear end "like massive poohs!"
... and the tractor with a bail fork loading up a trailer to take the bails away.

And just when I thought we'd done our harvest experience, Zac said, "Next we've got to see the cultivator!" (He's a big fan of Tractor Ted dvds, hence his detailed knowledge of farm machines!)

It's the cultivator, but it's not cultivating!

This involved a great many more trips to the field because the weather turned bad, and whilst I thought that would mean it was more likely they would be cultivating than harvesting elsewhere, after about a week we tracked down the farmer who said the field was too boggy to cultivate.

Heaven is hanging out in a combine wheel!

I have no idea how many times we walked to the field over the space of those four weeks. Lots. Sometimes several in a day. But what a great way to spend the summer holiday. It cost nothing, it involved fresh air and exercise, the boys learned loads about harvesting- partly because any time they got close to the farmer/ drivers they asked loads of questions in the way only young, uninhibited kids can, and the chaps seemed to enjoy taking the time to tell about everything, (they even gave them a brochure of farm machines they had in their cab!) I would never have planned the holidays that way, but by not planning anything they came up with the best possible solution.

I'm not saying spend your holiday in a field. The point I'm trying to make is: if your kids show an interest in something, then going with it can turn it into the easiest entertainment available, certainly much easier than planning activities for them which may or may not turn out how you'd hoped. So I'd love you to keep reading my blog, and if you do take anything from it- brilliant! But keep in mind that your kids have probably got much better ideas than any of us adults bloggering about on this www.



Here's Zac singing the combine song while he watches the real thing at work:
http://youtu.be/Kni3dn-K-mo

Slide

Triumph! I got right to the top!

When I was expecting my younger son we thought about things son-number-one might be able to do to entertain himself while I was tied down with the new baby. We got various bits of garden entertainment from local freecyclers, including a slide. I imagined sitting peacefully in the shade feeding the baby while Zac mucked about happily burning off some of his toddler energy. It didn't work out quite like that. When Danny was less than three weeks old Zac decided to demonstrate to his new baby brother how he could climb up and slide down all by himself (something he was usually very good at.) The climbing up was indeed good, but the sliding down didn't happen, as he did a big "Ta dah!" at the top and toppled off head first, fracturing his wrist.

Coming up.

At that point I suppose I could have got considerably more anxious about kids risk-taking, but actually it taught me that you just can't anticipate everything that might go wrong, accidents will always happen. In fact, the more you let them take the risks in a relatively controlled environment, the safer they become, because they have the experience, co-ordination and self-control to work out which physical challenges they can safely attempt. Although he was in plaster for 3 weeks, Zac was pretty much straight back on the slide and he has never fallen since. In fact both boys have had lots of fun on it, both climbing up and sliding down in as many ways as it is possible to imagine.

Stunt Pooh takes a leap!

And the slide hasn't only been used for sliding. The boys loved to drive their wheeled toys down it, propping up the end to make a launch ramp, and making toys leap the gap to a landing ramp. We also rolled balls down it to try and get them to land into a bucket or to knock over skittles.

Slide paintings.

We've used it for painting- by covering it in wallpaper lining and rolling paint-covered balls and wheeled toys down it to make tracks and patterns.
Zac once occupied himself for ages when he discovered that some little polystyrene balls which had leaked from a garden bean bag, moved in very strange ways on the slide due to the static electricity. He could "magically" make them travel up the slide by putting his finger just below them.

Homemade water slide.

The boys liked to run the hose down it and let things whizz down the "stream," even the ducks would water ski down it and into the paddling pool at the bottom, although it made it a bit too fast and slippery for the kids to try it themselves. We made a better water slide by running the hose down a big sheet of plastic on our grassy mound.

White duck enjoying herself!

So although our slide doesn't have 100% happy memories, it has given lots of enjoyment and is a good piece of equipment for thinking a bit laterally about how it can be used. We've just got it out of the shed again as we actually got some spring-like sunshine this weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing what the boys decide to do with it this year.

Here's a clip of baby Dan getting up the nerve to slide:

Hunt

Hunting high and low!

Aaah Easter. It's now three days since the big event but the boys are still clamouring for me to set up yet another Easter egg hunt round the garden! It makes me chuckle. If they were just given the chocolate I'm sure they'd scoff the lot within 24 hours, but they love the hunting so much they save their little eggs so I can hide them again, and when I've had enough, they hide them for each other to find. I'm not sure what the attraction is with hunting, does it attach us back to our prehistoric roots and make us hope that we could survive even if everything wasn't handed to us on a plate?
The boys definitely enjoy all kinds of hunt (although strangely, finding a missing shoe when we're late for school is the one time it doesn't seem to appeal.)

Found one!

A scavenger hunt is a great way to keep the kids active in the great outdoors. Basically you challenge them to find particular things, either on their own or in teams, and see if they can collect the lot. There are loads of different ideas for scavenger hunts on the internet. Some we've tried have been finding things which:

•  are a particular colour-  can you find 6 yellow things, or can you find one thing for each colour of the rainbow?  
• begin with a particular letter- who can find the most things which begin with the letter b?
• are a particular shape- can you find 4 round things?
• the same but different- can you find 5 different leaf shapes or different feathers?

If you're doing it as a party activity, you could give them a list of things to find- there are lots of printables online, either in words or pictures, but I'm not generally that organised, it's usually a spur-of-the-moment challenge when they're flagging on a walk or wondering how to occupy themselves in the garden.

Can you find a creature with lots of legs?

Can you find something which rustles?

 We also used to hunt for imaginary things! If we walked through the woods we inevitably searched for Gruffalo tracks, walking cross country often included a bit of a bear hunt- "Uh oh! Mud! Thick, oozy mud!" When the boys dressed up in their Knightly costumes they hunted dragons and other monsters, foam swords in hand.

What can you find at the bottom of a rock pool?

My own favourite place for hunting is at the beach. Beach combing is such a relaxing activity and you never know what you might find. Searching for interesting shaped pieces of driftwood, pebbles with a hole through, particular types of shell or beautiful sea-smoothed bottle glass is my idea of a perfect holiday activity, plus you can use the things you find to create pictures on the sand.
When I was young our family used to go on holiday to the Scilly Isles. The island we stayed on was only a couple of miles long and much less wide, and had no traffic other than the occasional tractor. One of the highlights of our stay was when dad set up an island-wide treasure hunt, with a series of written clues to follow, and all the kids would set off on a mission to find the treasure. I remember one year it was a 50p for each of us in the zip pocket on Grampa's hat! My boys are a bit little for this kind of hunt just yet, but I hope I can find a safe place for them to enjoy the same kind of challenge when they're older- it gave us such happy memories.

Of course, if the weather continues to be this cold (please, please let it be for not too much longer!) our main source of hunting fun will have to be indoors hide-and-seek or sardines, tho how many more times I can pretend to be surprised to find Danny under our bed I'm not sure!