An overview of month three of the “365 day nature play challenge”. March sees the start of some healthy new routines, a consolidation of earlier challenges and a lack of big adventures.
The least adventurous month? And a new furry friend…
Maybe it’s not surprising that a month full of school days has been the least adventurous so far. Looking back over all the things we’ve done I’m a bit shocked at how many are close to home and quite short in duration. It’s felt like a month where we progressed a lot, got more into the routines, and went back and revisited earlier challenges. The joys of spring have brought a lot of new things to look at and interact with which has been fun.
The biggest new thing for us this month was actually not featured in the challenge at all but has had a bit effect on it. We’ve found a very nice friendly dog with a lovely family who is in need of some extra exercise and B and I have been walking him twice a week. Ironically this has both hugely increased B’s time out of doors but also decreased her time for the challenge as when the dog is there, she doesn’t have attention to spare for anything else.
As a result, I’ve gone back to the things I remember doing with B when she was younger as these are easier to multi task with. This has resulted in the collecting things post which saw us looking, on different dog walks, for feathers, twigs, ghost leaves, catkins and blossom and also found a use for the weird squidgy things the tree behind our house scatters everywhere at this time of year. We’ll take a bit of a rest from this one in April I suspect but come back to it in summer when there’s a new lot of options out there. The newer spotting things page has had a bird focus to match the spring tweetings but will hopefully evolve into April when we will be travelling a lot and needing things to while away dull days on the motorway.
Revisiting January challenges
The other big trend of the month has been the amount we’ve gone back and done again challenges we tried in January. We continued our moon spotting by attempting to see the elusive lunar eclipse; found an insect spotting challenge for our small front garden; and finally applied ourselves a bit more scientifically to the art of making hand shadows. We also had another good day on the beach, finding the joys and possibilities of large amounts of driftwood.
Scavenger Hunts and Treasure Hunts both came back on the agenda with gusto this month with lots of new spotting options for the former and nice weather to encourage the latter. While B’s birthday treasure hunt did not go as well as hoped, the brownies really enjoyed their scavenger hunt and it felt like that type of challenge really suited all the new things Spring has to offer.
Some new Spring strands.
As March began I started several new strands with the aim of slowly growing them over time. Some of these, such as the things to do in a small back garden one, have grown really quickly, while others such as things to do in the local park, and visiting farms have been slower to grow. I suspect both of these will find themselves added to a lot in April with a bit more out of school time to hand. We had a lot of fun making daisy chains and bird feeders too and I suspect we’ll find more activity type challenges in the next few weeks.
Finally I consolidated all the ‘witchy’ type challenges into one this month and we had the joy of adding in frogspawn and tadpoles! It’s the first time I’ve ever watched them grow and both B and I have found it really exciting. Very grateful for the keen gardeners at the local park who’ve fostered them so carefully.
Going into April…
I’m expecting quite a big change in the challenges in the next few weeks. For the first time since we started in January, we now have a serious amount of school holiday time to play with and, after a month filled with school routine, will switch to hardly any school at all. We’re also travelling to Suffolk to see family and are looking forward to getting them involved and finding some big new adventures in new landscapes. After a quiet domestic month my aim to push both of us more now. With better weather, and three months of challenge behind us, I feel we’re ready to strike out in new directions and see what we find.
Overview of February’s challenges (334-337)
Overview of month one of the 365 Day Nature Play Challenge (365-335
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