Sam Goldsworthy: The Outdoor Garden

Today we're joined on our blog by our wonderful guest Sam Goldsworthy. Sam is an experienced childminder (go and give her a follow at https://www.facebook.com/SamGoldsworthyChildminding/) with a passion for learning outdoors and today she shares her wisdom for supporting learning at home in the garden. 

The garden is such a rich learning space within our setting which we access daily.

We often spent time outdoors just lying on the grass together watching the clouds float by talking about the shapes that we can see in the clouds. We then shut our eyes and talk about what we can hear around us - usually this is birds cheeping, the wind blowing through the trees and maybe cars and helicopters too. This sometimes leads in to Yoga in the garden - flapping like a bird, standing tall like a tree, lying straight like a stick.

We use natural treasures such as leaves, pine cones, flower petals etc that we find to make potions in our mud kitchen which encourages many mathematical opportunities such as counting, size ordering and strengthening both gross and finer motor skills.  These treasures are usually collected to feature on our nature shelf indoors to remind us all of our adventures in our hand painted bowl. We learn about the different flowers and leaves using our Little Robin education nature cards to match to them. Lots of our children can name many leaves  such as: Holly and Ivy.

The natural treasures we find we create collages, hanging decorations for our playroom, pictures, number and letters as well as natural paintbrushes to mark make with mud.

Our outdoor playhouse is used in many different ways depending on how the children choose  to use it - It has been a shop, a playhouse, their work place like Mummy and Daddy. They also re enact different fairytales and stories too such as The Three little pigs and The Tiger who came to tea.  It sparks many different imaginative scenarios and in turn many language opportunities such as ‘Can I have 2 cakes please?’ ‘I am going to work’, ‘Quick the big bad wolf Is coming’.

We have a play outdoor campfire area which has saucepans, natural treasures such as pine cones, conkers, leaves etc and a cauldron. They like to pretend to cook over the fire - again lots of literacy and maths opportunities take place whilst most importantly playing.

We are also lucky enough to have a pond which sparks many different learning opportunities - they like to pond dip for pond skaters, tadpoles and even newts. They learn about the frog life cycle first hand by physically watching for the changes to happen.

 We do lots of planting vegetables in our setting such as: potatoes, peas and carrots which help the children learn where their food comes from. We care for the plants by watering them daily which encourages ownership and self esteem. Planting is an ideal opportunity to extend mathematical learning outside of the playroom as the children notice how much they have grown by measuring them and using mathematical language such as taller and shorter. We have chickens and ducks to care for too - the children enjoy feeding and collecting the eggs each day.

 We feel that the outdoors is the best classroom for the children in their early years.

Take a tour of Sam's wonderful outdoor garden in our Wanderlust Child Nature Study Programme which is available here.