Finding ways to play with and in the biggest, most climbable, garden tree including: climbing the garden tree; putting a hoist and pulley system into the garden tree; B makes an animal feeder; making things at the top of the tree; making a swing.

356 – Climbing the garden tree

Friday 10 January.  Weather: dry and cloudy.  Temperature: 2°C.

B’s idea.  We have a lovely tall evergreen tree in the garden which she worked out how to climb last summer for the first time. I think she just got tall enough. It’s got a good step up branch and she can get about 1.5 metres above the ground in two bounds. Higher is harder as she has to wiggle round the branches but that also means she feels safer. She’s risk averse, like me, but has really got into climbing it recently.

She gets a good two or three metres above the ground this time. After going up the normal way she tries different routes and experiments. A swing hangs from one of the low branches and she sees if she can climb on that and get up from there (it’s tricky). I ask her if she can chalk a ‘356’ sign on the trunk and she has fun doing that and then seeing if she can climb higher than it.  Then suddenly she’s done and heading back inside.

It was a great way to start the weekend anyway and got her energy levels reset really well after school.  Hurray for trees! Afterwards I wonder if I could have got her out there longer. Maybe I could have got her to tie things round the branches (she loved getting the lights down from the park – see challenge 362 – Taking down the Christmas lights). Or maybe she could have picked things off the tree for me? It occurs to me that we’ve got a hoist set somewhere we could have set up in it. I make a mental note to try this one again.

The alternative challenge 337 – hoist and pulleys

So it’s Wednesday the 29 January and we’re officially making peanut butter treats for the birds. Well I am. But B has other ideas. I mentioned the idea of putting a pulley system in the tree on the way home from school and she’s running with it while I’m trying to apply the peanut butter covered brakes!

She’s got an engineering set in the cupboard which she’s had for years and years and it’s got a hook and pulley system on it. It’s not what I’d have gone for but I’m not supervising and she’s up the tree before I know where she’s going with bits of wool, trying to tie it onto the tree.

It’s only afterwards I realise how cool it could have been. I’m busy and she gets very cross and angry as it fails to hold where she wants it too and keeps breaking and changing in ways she doesn’t want. A total failure but we’re definitely going back to this idea. It just needed a bit of adult guiding to the best equipment I think. Telling myself it’s all a good learning curve.

325 – Putting a pulley system in the garden tree

Monday 10 February. Cloudy. 5°C

It’s a cold Monday afternoon and we’re tackling the challenge of getting a pulley system in the garden tree. I really like the idea of making one but we haven’t got a lot of time. We’ve got a basic pulley set in the cupboard so pull that out. It’s a basic round one with a carabiner attached. We get some garden wire to attach it to a high branch and she climbs up and ties it on. It’s tricky and it takes her a while but she gets there. We have a wooden box and rope we use inside sometimes to make a pulley and we decorate that with a 325 and she climbs up again to get the rope through. Then we satisfy ourselves that the box will go up and down easily.

It feels like a short little challenge again but the next day a friend comes over to play and it takes off completely. They realise they can potentially use it to get things up high in the tree and they move the whole system about a metre higher and start fetching ribbons and toys to try moving them up and down. I think this challenge might roll on and on. I’d love to have a go at making the pulley system from scratch and I think B wants to build a tree house now (there’s no space up there!).

320 – Making an animal feeder

Saturday 15 February.  Rainy and cloudy.  6°C

This is one of those days on the 365 Day Nature Play Challenge.. It’s rained all day, we’ve both been busy, it’s got to 4pm, is getting dark and we haven’t done the challenge yet. I panic a bit.  The last two weeks have been a struggle to find things.  The weather’s been consistently cold, grey and unhelpful and I feel we’re in desperate need of a new idea.  I don’t have any. 

B rides to the rescue again.  She’s a bit obsessed with the garden tree this week.  Putting the pulley system in on Monday has opened up lots of possibilities and she keeps getting drawn towards it, spending ages making slides out of ribbon for the little garden fairy toys.   I’m worried we’ve done it to death but remind myself it’s meant to be about her having fun not me. 

Me: “Why don’t you try and build a birds nest at the top?”

B isn’t keen. “No”. Instead she heads off on her own, grabbing sticks and cutting the pine leaves off, finding peanuts and carefully making a little pine ‘plate’ of nuts on a branch.  It takes her ages and she’s pleased with it.

I’m not helpful.  “I don’t think that will work!  What’s going to find it there?”

She has the last laugh.  The next day we have a new garden visitor – a very enthusiastic squirrel.  He finds the nuts in the tree and the pot that B used to cut pine leaves into and explores both thoroughly.  We spend ages watching him and his interactions with the rabbits (who fail to frighten him at all) and our cat (who has a lot of fun watching him through the kitchen window).

This challenge makes me think a lot about how the challenge is going and how it works.  I definitely broke one of the basic challenge rules by trying to pull B back from the direction she wanted to go in.  I realise there’s a basic conflict between my desire to get a lot of different clearly expressed ideas for the website that other people can follow… and the way B plays, which is instinctive, intuitive and sometimes doesn’t fit into a box. 

171 – Making things at the top of the tree

Monday 14 July. Cloudy. 21°C

It’s mid summer and we haven’t done anything in the garden tree for ages. I’m trying to get B out front to do an insect challenge but I mention the tree and she’s off. I suggest she climb to the top and make something up there for the birds or the kitten or the fairy who lives in the tree, using the pulley system.

She climbs up and wedges herself at the top and starts by shaking the branches thoroughly so lots of bits fall on my head. She thinks this is very funny. I don’t. Then she orders paper, scissors and sticky tape. I retrieve it and put it in the pulley system and pull it up to her. It’s tricky getting to the box but she manages and then settles, happily crafting, for ages. She hasn’t found a good sitting place yet. Occasionally she drops stuff down or we send more stuff up.

I’m imagining a better birds nest, or a fairy house or something. Finally she throws something down.

“There you go”

It’s a maths chart. Not really what I had in mind but heigh ho. She’s enjoyed herself.

85 – Making a swing

Wednesday 8 October. Cloudy. 16°C

Making a swing was on my list for the summer holidays but it proved harder than I expected. As with kite flying and crab fishing it turns out location is all. You need a good tree, in a location where no one will mind but others might enjoy. There’s some woods near us with a few swings already helpfully put up by long ago families who knew what they were doing. We’re not 100% confident we’re going to make a safe one so in the end we find ourselves back at the garden tree.

B mentions it first. We have a swing in the tree already but she wants one going in the other direction and finds a suitable branch for it to hang from. A few days later, in the park, we finally find a stick which could work (not too many bumpy or sticky out bits and reasonably bottom shaped). We take it home and saw a bit off the end.

There is some rope left over from camping I think will be strong enough. We opt for a traditional swing design and tie a piece of rope to each end, then tie the other ends to the branch. Amazingly our knots hold and it’s strong enough to take B’s weight (though I’m not risking it). It’s not as comfortable as it had seemed in the park though. There’s clearly an art to stick finding and swing making.

However, it turns out there’s other ways it can be fun apart from swinging. After about two minutes back and forth we find ourselves twirling it round and round and seeing it swing back. Then B wants to make it into a pulley system. As we pull the stick up and down the cats find it and have their own fun. Finally B attaches the rope to her legs, sits on the other swing and finds she can pull the stick up by swinging. THIS fun lasts MUCH longer.