Today we were very pleased to host our 2nd Soup Share event. This time we invited the ladies from the Needle & Natter group as a thank you for all the work they have put in to making clothes for our dolls. Since Halloween is coming up we decided to make pumpkin soup. We had 3 pumpkins at playgroup, a small one, a middle sized one and a big one. We used the big one and chopped it up to put in our soup. Jane had already cooked some pumpkin in the over and we were interested to see how it had gone all soft and soggy and not like the fresh pumpkin at all. The seeds inside the pumpkin were super slimey and we did not like touching them at all! We were interested to see that the seeds are all white whereas the seeds we can eat are green. We’re not sure why that is and we want to find out! We tried cutting the seeds open and banging them with a hammer but that didnt help us work out why the seeds we can eat are green.

After we’d made our soup we made pumpkin seed rolls. We rolled out some dough and put it into baking trays and then brushed it over with some oil to make it shiny. Once they were shiny we poured green pumpkin seeds all over them and hoped they would stick to the shiny rolls.

The last thing we made was icing to go on Angus’ pumpkin muffins. We really liked the icing! It was very tempting to spill it just a little and then scoop it up with our fingers and have a little taste.

We were so pleased that lots of Needle & Natter ladies came to share our soup. They said it was very tasty and that made us feel very proud. We wore our stickers saying Soup Chef to show that we had helped cook the lunch.

Playgroup is now closed for the October break. We will re-open in our newly redecorated playroom on Monday October 22nd.

As we are well into the autumn season and, with the weather getting colder and wetter, we would be very grateful if parents can remember to send waterproofs and wellies with their children 🍁🍂🍂🌧🌬.

Our woodland play sessions will continue after the October break. Our next session will be on Thursday Oct 25th.

We are always pleased to welcome Lisa from Child Smile to playgroup. Today she brought our friend Ollie along and talked to the children about how to brush their teeth. The children are always interested in her talks and love to brush Ollie’s teeth!

Huge thank you to the volunteers who came along to help clear out our room today. We cant wait to see how our room looks after it has been redecorated!

We have been interested in fungi in the woods and this week we started to grow our own fungi in the playroom. We have been amazed at how quickly our fungi have grown. These fungi are ordinary mushrooms and it has been gratifying to hear the children remember the instructions they heard in the woods so clearly – always wash your hands if you touch fungi in the woods.

After picking some of our mushrooms we used knives to cut them up and to see the gills underneath the cap. The stalks just snapped off, we didn’t need to use the knife at all.

We have also been interested in pizza in the playroom and in finding where the Gruffalo lives in the woods. We combined all of our interest today and made a Gruffalo and mushroom shaped pizza. We suggested putting some (real) mushrooms on our mushroom shaped pizzas but that didnt go down too well!