New document from the Care Inpsectorate and the Scottish Government just released with guidance on providing outdoor play-based learning!

Out to Play

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We all enjoyed our Dark Woods session last week. It was lovely to have so many of our children and also their families join us. It is amazing to see and feel the differences in the woods when it is dark and also to see the energy, enthusiasm and confidence in our children as they set off to show their parents and siblings where we hold our woodland sessions. On site we had our new tent up and fairy lights decorating some of the trees. There was a dark rope trail, Santa was on his usual pulley ready to be hoisted up and down while the rope swing was also in play. The biggest attraction however was the campfire and children enjoyed helping chop wood to keep the fire burning. As they had requested they made toast, sausages and marshmallows and accompanied all of these with cups of hot chocolate.
We’ve had a lot of positive feedback about the session, thank you, and, a request for a repeat session some time next year. Watch this space!

We have decided to cancel our morning session in the woods this week (Dec 6th) as we will be holding our Dark Woods session the same evening. Please feel free to join us, leaving at 6pm from the Garages. Please let me (jane@cambusbarronplaygroup.com) know if you plan to attend for catering purposes.

We had a fantastic session in the woods today. Our children are growing in confidence in the woodland environment.
We were interested to see if there were any changes to the woods after Storm Ali visited last week. We did see several trees that had fallen over and lots and lots of leaves and sticks on the ground. We remembered that the rain had turned the path into a river and we saw how the water had washed away some of the stones and mud and made the path all bumpy.

We were visited by several dogs during our session today and it was lovely to see how our children are learning to respect animals and beginning to understand that they should stand still and wait until the dogs have gone past. We were unlucky however that one passing dog took a fancy to one of our children’s mitts and ran off with it! If anyone finds a (lovely) mutt with a mitt in the neighbourhood please let us know!

We tried out a new activity today and put up a hammock. The children rapidly became experts at getting on to and out of the hammock. They thoroughly enjoyed the gentle swaying motion of swinging in the hammock and gazing at the trees and sky.

We were excited by the number of different mushrooms and toadstool we’ve been finding and also are becoming experts at spotting them in lots of different places. Some grow high up on trees, some in the grass and some in hollows beside the tree roots. There are so many shapes and colours. We have been learning that some mushrooms and toadstools can make us feel very sick so that we never try to eat them and that its best not to touch them. Sometimes we might touch one accidentally though and that’s ok, we just need to remember to wash our hands.

We’ve also been thinking about where the birds and animals in the woods live. We spotted some nest boxes on our walk to the woods today and we think it would be good to make a bird box and put it up in the woods for the birds to make a nest in. We found a den that looked just like the Gruffalo’s den so we decided to see if we could find where Fox, Owl, Snake and Mouse live too!

All in all, a huge amount of fun and just as much learning packed into 3 hours this morning 👍🏻

We’re keeping an eye on the forecast for our woodland play session on Wednesday. Please be aware that the forecast at the moment is for storms so we may need to change plans at the last minute 💨💨💨

http://www.stirlingweather.co.uk/forecast.shtml?x=1537184861072

A reminder that we are in the woods again tomorrow (Tuesday Sept 11th). We will meet at 9:15 at The Garages on Gilles Hill. Pick up will be at 12:25. 

Another fantastic woodland play session. We didn’t even have many midgies. The burn is sadly depleted and not much mud left but we enjoyed setting up our swing and splashing in the little bits of water we could find. Still quite a few soggy socks going home 🙂

Another great day today at Woodland Play. So interesting to see the dynamics in this group and how they interacted differently with each other and the environment. Also lovely to see how they all grew in confidence as the session progressed. We had lots of water play again today, cakes, soup and mud pies were the order of the day. The children loved spotting the furry animals in the trees and we remembered all the animals from the Gruffalo story and how they ate scrambled snake, roasted fox and owl ice-cream! We thought we might spot a Gruffalo in our woods but we didnt even see a purple prickle 😒

We found a den and wanted to make a bed in it so we got a blanket and covered it all up. We really wanted to make a hanging bed though, we decided that was called a hammock, but we didn’t have the bits with us today. We will try to get them for next time and we can sleep in the den in the hammock. We did make a swing today, it was great fun. We took turns and even helped each other push. Our snack was hot chocolate and a biscuit again, we were quite cosy under our shelter. There were some wee bugs in the burn, we think they are water lice or shrimps. We got our books out to check but we couldnt find the same ones. We did find some lovely flowers in the tree book. There was a lovely white tree with flowers just like the one next to the Community Centre garden.

We’ll be back again on Monday – cant wait!