Playing in the local park and exploring formal gardens. Challenges include feeding the squirrels; playing listening hide and seek; digging in the dirt at Kew Gardens, exploring the Parkland Walk in Crouch End and running away from the responsible adult at Dyffryn Gardens. We find a perfect mix of litter picking, finding ingredients to make ‘perfume’, hide and play ‘guess what?’.
304 – Feeding the squirrels.
Monday 3 March. Sunny. 11°C
We finally get to squirrel feeding. I’d actually given up on this one, B never seemed interested and we kept diverting into other activities. I was planning a listening challenge (this is an ongoing plan of about two weeks which still hasn’t worked out. Hopefully it will soon and this will become a link!) We took seeds and nuts with us however and listening to birds was hugely upstaged by cheeky and very tame squirrels coming down to see what we might have.
We make a 304 out of seeds, watch the squirrels racing through the tree tops and leave nuts out for them to find later (they’re more curious than hungry – I suspect they’re chronically over fed!). Then B gets distracted with a big stick on the ground – she’s worked out if she stands on it she can get it to rock back and forth. Then we spot some worms. They’re appreciating the sun too, stretched out and racing across the surface of the earth. We put obstacles in their way and see how they work round them but avoid picking them up. One for next time.
303 – Collecting things: Feathers >
< 305 – Returning to the beach for sandcastles
299 – Listening challenge: Hide & Seek
Saturday 8 March. Cloudy. 12°C
Finally, FINALLY, we manage a listening challenge. I’ve been wanting to do one for weeks but they’re strangely hard to get to work. Since the doomed night time attempt (323), I’ve set out on a few days with the intention of getting B tracking birds or closing her eyes and listening to see what she can hear, but it’s just not worked. The attractions of the visible world are more immediate I suspect… and I slightly wonder how much B is used to using her ears. This may be a general problem with 9 year olds?! In the end I go to my back up plan and ask her advice. As is often the case it takes her about 30 seconds.
B: “I know! Why don’t we play hide and seek but the person hiding has to make a noise so the person finding can track them”.
Brilliant!
We head back to the local park for this one. We need a reasonably quiet space (bird and animal noises very welcome – cars and talking more distracting). I’ve considered playing hide and seek in the park before but had dismissed it as too dangerous and scary. The idea of B just running off and me not finding her made me nervous. This sounds much more possible though. There’s only one problem. B has brought her walkie talkies with her and wants us to use those to find each other. I point out this is not really a nature play thing but she’s determined. In the end we compromise and try both.
We try the non-electronic version first. We have to limit the area we can use so that the person counting is always within ears reach of the person hiding, but that’s still quite a bit space. We agree on a bird whistle sound we can both do. I hide and whistle at regular intervals and B finds me pretty easily. She hides, forgets to whistle regularly and it’s trickier but more fun. As it’s pretty easy to follow the sound hiding really well becomes a priority.
We then try the walkie talkies and open up the range to the whole (small) park. We agree that the hider can give 5 clues to the seeker. B gives unhelpful clues and is impossible to find. I give helpful ones and am found immediately. I sulk. B prefers this version (as she wins easier!) and I prefer the other. I suspect we’ll try both again soon though. It was fun and it felt like there were lots of other possibilities.
< 300 – Making things out of the garden waste
263 – Drawing in the earth (and finding weird white stuff that maybe should be avoided)
Saturday 12 April. Sunny. 22°C
It’s a beautiful sunny spring day and we’re meeting friends at Kew Gardens. It’s a surprisingly hard place to do nature challenges in because it’s so tidy. In retrospect we probably should have done a spotting things challenge, or a finding rare plants challenge but we head out looking for sticks. We’re wondering if we can do a sword fight with them, or build a den, but finding them in the first place proves very tricky.
By rummaging underneath some bushes B’s friend finally comes up trumps with a long brown stick that looks like it comes off some sort of palm tree. It looks a bit like a rake. I find a curved, decaying loopy stick thing with a few ants attached. We’re definitely not going to be building dens or having sword fights so we look for another option.
There’s a beautiful big conifer nearby with a round space underneath perfect for playing. The kids try bouncing on the branches and I challenge them to make a 263 in the (very dry) earth. It’s not easy. They do a big one with their feet but it doesn’t photograph at all. We try a smaller one with the stick but it’s still not visible. I try filling it in with sticks but there’s only teeny bits about and it’s taking ages. Finally we try digging. It’s been a very dry March and the earth is like sand but when we dig we find the moisture underneath and it shows up on camera.
The kids go on and try and dig other things, like maths equations. A bit of the ground is white and when they dig it, dust flies up. It doesn’t look very healthy so we give up and head off to enjoy the treetop walk instead.
261 – Nature walk in Crouch End
Sunday 13 April. Sunny. 16°C
We’re meeting friends in Crouch End and, knowing our current obsession, they suggest we explore the Parkland Walk. It’s a great place and the girls are off straight away finding different paths to run down and different things to see. I spot a fox walking nonchalantly along and then escaping into the bushes as B runs after it. Then F’s mum tops everything by spotting a woodpecker in a nearby tree. I’m SO excited – I’ve never seen one before. We can hear it pecking as well as watching it.
We challenge F to do todays numbers and she makes a fabulous 261 using leaves and stones. The girls then take lots of photos of things they think are interesting and find some dandelions. For some reason B decides she wants to pluck hers rather than blow it while F tries to keep hers intact for as long as possible.
259 – Running away from the responsible adult
Wednesday 16 April. Sunny and windy. 11°C
One for tweens this. We’re at Dyffryn Gardens with friends doing their Easter games trail. We’ve got a cross section of different aged kids and all are enjoying but the older two want a bit of independence and set off on their own to find the rest. They’re old enough to go a little way on their own but not big enough not to get suddenly lost so I follow at a distance and there’s the best game right there.
They run away giggling whenever they see me and start to use the many different paths of the ornate garden as a way to hide. I walk at a steady pace and can usually predict where they’re going to pop out based on where I think the paths are coming out. If I get too close I lurk behind something till they see me. Then they squeal and run off again.
222 – Exploring trees with friends
Saturday 24 May. Cloudy. 16°C
It’s the first day of the half term break and a B and a few other friends are hanging out in the local park. This is a zero effort challenge for me – it’s like when I played out in the park as a child. They run off to find dens in the undergrowth. There’s not a lot of options, it’s not the most interesting park. In the end they give up on that and congregate around one tree near the entrance. It’s not the easiest to climb but the two most adventurous manage it. Helpfully B gets them to agree to chalking a ‘222’ on the branch. Someone’s tied a stick up with a bit of rope and they have a go at swinging off that too. Then they find a pack of paper aeroplanes to make and have a go at testing the wind direction too which gives us an idea for Sunday… It’s a pleasant normal evening but rare enough that it’s the first time we’ve been able to do this sort of challenge.
220 – Finding baby conkers and baby helicopter seeds
Monday 26 May. Cloudy. 16°C
Yesterday’s windy day has born fruit. A spring windfall! There are lots of tiny baby conkers all over the ground. We examine them, touch the prickles (which are still quite soft) and B uses her nails to open them and find the tiny baby conker inside. Then we find sycamore ‘helicopters’. They’re green and I don’t think they’ll fly but they do – one goes sideways at great speed. We fill out pockets and take them both home as ‘treasure’.
218 – Litter picking, collecting ingredients for perfume and hide and seek
Wednesday 28 May. Sunny. 17°C
It’s another playdate for B and K and we’re heading back to the site of their shared treasure hunt in January. They both really enjoyed that one and are bouncy as they get near. K has grabbed the litter picker and is having a lot of fun. Learning from our previous adventure with it I tell her not to pick anything till she gets near the park. We only have one litter picker so I throw another idea into the mix. We’ve done a lot of collecting potions ingredients but now it’s late spring and there are lots of interesting smelly flowers around.
Me: “Why don’t you look for things to make perfume with?”
Them: “YEAH!!!”
It was a big thing last summer, making perfume. We’ve got a couple of spray bottles we use to water plants and they’re still full of mixtures of lavender and roses. Its’ too early for lavender here still but the roses are in full bloom. They’re happy for ages, exploring, finding things that smell and collecting litter at the same time. We’ve got a basket and a bin bag with us and both slowly fill up.
Then they move on. “Can we climb trees?” They head back to the one they climbed last time and I leave them to it to make the 218. They’re bored with making numbers at the moment. It merges into a game of hide and seek. B and I tried that a few months ago (see above) but it’s much easier with three. We try one of them hiding and two hunting and then do the version where if you find them first you stay with them. They refuse to stay still but keep changing location, which turns out to be the easiest way to spot them.
217 – ‘Guess what?’
Thursday 29 May. Cloudy. 18°C
It was clearly a good day yesterday because today B wants to go straight back to the same park.
B: “I’ve got an idea. A new game.”
We’ve recently been playing ‘guess who’ a lot. She calls this one ‘Guess What?’. Basically you each pick something in the park and the other person has to guess what it is. (Is it a tree? Is it a flower bed? Is it a log? Is it something manmade? Is it in this area?). We could probably hone the instructions a bit. The ‘area’ question is really helpful but takes a lot of the craft out of finding things! Fun though. We hide our ‘217’ number for the day on the thing we’ve picked. We also try timing each other finding them to see whose quickest and limiting each other to certain areas.
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