We had so much fun with parents, friends and family on our last Stay and Play day that we decided to have an outdoor Stay and Play day too.

The bairns have been really interested in developing their outdoor play environments and had some great ideas, so we thought it would be great to get parents involved in our journey to creating more outdoor play areas.  We were also very grateful of all the gardening and joinery skills that the parents brought with them!

We are so excited to start growing things in our new planter, which allows us to watch the roots grow and the worms play. Sydney and his Dad and Anri and her sister, helped us to fill it up.

Wow – we’ve been busy.  So many seeds planted to decorate our playground.  The bairns also chose to grow some lettuce, rocket and herbs for us to try at snack time and share with the rest of the school.

“I wonder which herb will be the best?” (Maximus)

“You have to water the seeds or they’ll not grow.” (Owen)

We’re glad we had big sisters to help us…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

….and little brothers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johanne and Anri were very intrigued at the different sizes of seeds.  “They’re actually much smaller than I thought.” (Johanne)

   “They’re tiny!” (Anri)

“If we plant some lettuce seeds we could have a salad for snack.” (Maximus)

 

 

 

 

 

 

After exploring the signs they found in the forest, the bairns thought we should have signs for other play areas too.  They even suggested we make signs to show directions on how to get to the forest and pond.  We had lots of great discussion about the different directions and instructions we would need to give to get to the right place and got to work on making some signs, with the help of Sydney’s Dad.

We really loved getting to work with our hammers and nails to create the signs.  We hammered the nails in to spell out the letters and words we wanted.

We used string and elastic bands to twist around the nails to make the letters stand out.  It was quite testing on our fine motor skills twisting in and out the nails.

Even more exciting was getting to hammer in the nails and NO ONE HIT THEIR FINGERS, YEAY!!!!

Alec brought his own hammer from home and kindly showed others how to use it.

 

It was great to have so many parents and Grandparents helping to spell out the words we needed.

We were finding it difficult to make our way through the forest as the trees grow bigger, so we pruned some trees to make paths around the forest.  Mrs Colvin used the cuttings to weave a Tee-Pee den!  We look forward to making more over the next term.

After all our busy work, the bairns were inspired to change their ice cream shop into a garden centre and shop and got to work creating an amazing indoor gardening space too.

Well done to all involved, we had such a busy, fun day with you all.  We look forward to lots more fun days to come!

Special thanks to Alans of Gillock for supplying the wood and nails for the signs and to Jolene for the seeds and gardening skills!