natural learning
Don’t forget that summer is a season too – it’s easy to overlook when children learn so much about springtime renewal and growth, autumnal changes and wintry weather over the course of the year. An interesting twist on exploring the seasons is to look at what the seasons are right now in other parts of the world – particularly if you have children with family or cultural roots around the globe. Show children a real globe, pointing out that on the opposite side of the world to us, they have the opposite season – use an orange to represent the sun, to show how the earth spins on its axis (the globe’s ‘stand’) and around the sun at the same time. Concepts to share with even very young children might include:
- July in Central and Southern Europe is hot; in northern Europe it means many hours of daylight but cool temperatures. Some countries have no night-time at all during the summer – and barely any daylight during the winter. What would it be like to never have darkness in the summer? Have children noticed it is probably light when they go to bed now?
- In some parts of Australia, July is cool and damp, not unlike a British springtime. Other parts, such as the tropical Northern Territory, are dry and the central desert areas go many years without any rain at all. If children have heard of Australia, it is likely they imagine it to be all seaside and sunshine!
- Around the equator, the seasons barely change and people who live there need to adapt to blazing sun and high temperatures all year round.
- In very large countries and continents in the Northern hemisphere, July can be baking, even far away from the equator – large land masses retain their heat. Have children experienced really hot weather? Ask them to share what it felt like.
- Continents such as Africa and America span such large areas they have summer and winter at the same time. The southernmost tips of America and Africa both have penguin colonies. Explore books to find out more about these kinds of territories, their habitats and their wildlife.
activity
IN A TIGHT SPOT
Small outdoor spaces often overheat during the summer – so it is important to implement measures to make playing outdoors safe and pleasant:
- Planting: greenery is known to lower temperatures and increase humidity; many cities have planting mandates for new developments to help counteract the effect of yet more concrete on the micro-climate. Plants do this through transpiration whereby their leaves release water vapour, cooling and moistening the air around – see the STEM springboards, right, for ideas. Any kind of planting can help in your setting’s garden.
- Shade sails: create instant shade with tarpaulins or large sheets pegged, bungeed or tied above head height to walls, fences, trees, posts, play equipment and drainpipes – anything robust, really! Unless the fabric expressly states it has UV-resistant properties, sun rays will still get through, so this isn’t an alternative to sunscreen, but it is a great way to cool children down and allow stories or small-world play outdoors.
- Dens and shelters: on a smaller scale, provide children with sheets, blankets, tarpaulin offcuts and dozens of pegs and lengths of string. If you are short of places to drape fabrics, low-cost A-shaped washing airers make great den frames, upright or on their sides.
- Water play: splashy fun is a given during the summer, but consider also providing a trough of water adjacent to seating or a step so that children can sit and cool their bare feet. A narrow planting trough is ideal for this – it’s too constricted to allow the more boisterous children to splash all the water away (provide them with buckets and tuff-spots of water instead) but wide enough for small feet to dip into. Running water is also excellent at cooling – if you can leave a hose pipe running for a while, collecting the water for reuse elsewhere later, it will leave droplets in the air; attach a spray gun to your hose and give children and the air around them a couple of bursts of water every half an hour or so.
- Seating in the shade: I’m a big fan of portable seating solutions; if your seating can’t easily be moved, encourage children to sit in the shade with cushions, logs, blankets and beanbags.
- Keep the doors and windows open: so-called ‘freeflow curtains’ do make a difference, allowing children to move indoors and outdoors at will, but keeping breezes and (most) insects out. Improvise flyscreens by taping cotton sheets to the window frames.
STEM
JULY SPRINGBOARDS
Why do plants make the air around them cooler and more moist? Show children a simple diagram of the water cycle: clouds release rain; rain is absorbed into the ground or flows into the sea; plant roots capture water and use it; then it is released as vapour through the leaves or evaporates from the sea, and goes back into the air where it can become a cloud again.
On a hot day, children can test the coolness and moisture of water by immersing a hand into a bowl of cold water, flicking water in their own face (eyes closed) or by placing a wet flannel or paper towel on the back of their neck.
active stories
Where Did You Go Today? written and illustrated by Jenny Duke, is only a few years old but is one of my favourites for taking outdoors; the narrator spends her day outdoors, in locations children will find familiar – the park, the main street – but her imagination takes her on a fabulous adventure around the world, across seas, over the treetops and among exotic animals.
The pictures and text are bursting with movement and perfect for ‘acting out’ in the setting’s garden, using your own features and spaces to spark imaginary interactions.
planning ahead…
- PlayDay this year is 4 August – I hope it is an annual celebration in your setting by now. Get children outdoors and active – see my June calendar in Nursery World for lots of physical play ideas – and show children you can be just as playful as them: www.playday.org.uk.
- It is Roald Dahl day on 13 September and many of his stories take place outdoors. Choose a favourite story, and set up the garden as the stage set for a week of creative storytelling, songs, acting and dancing. Think about decorations, character cut-outs, costumes and props to encourage children to really live the story.
creativity
I’ve been supporting a fundraising urban art trail, Hares of Hampshire, this year – our 2m tall, artist-decorated Hares will be in Winchester and Southampton by the time you read this. There are urban art trails all over the country and many, including ours, also showcase the creativity of local schools, settings and youth groups through smaller versions of the original sculptures.
- Create your own summer art trail: look at the Wild in Art website for sculpture inspiration, then choose an animal to represent your setting. Print an outline drawing of your animal for each child to design, then they sculpt their own animal from air-drying clay. Once the sculptures are dry, paint them white and, again, allow them to dry. Now the children can transfer their drawn design ideas onto their animals, using paint, decoupage, mosaic, collage – any artistic style they like, really. A coat of yacht varnish at the end makes the sculptures really zing as they catch the sunlight.
- Create the trail in your garden by choosing locations for each animal, thinking about what they will look like in situ, how easily people can find them and what each animal’s ‘story’ might be. Choose high and low positions, easy-to-spot locations and places that children will have to hunt for, too.
- Our ‘Hares’ trail is fundraising for a local charity that supports Southampton Children’s Hospital – why not make your art trail a fundraiser for your setting, or your nominated charity, too? You could ask parents to ‘sponsor’ an animal – in other words, paying the cost of the kit their child will use. At the end of the summer, our giant Hares will be auctioned off – it may seem a bit cheeky, but you could ask parents to ‘bid’ for their child’s decorated animal at the end of your trail, or ask a small business, the local library or a shop to display them for a few weeks, alongside a tin for donations for you or your chosen charity.
July top tips
Not every child will get to go away on a holiday this year, and only a few will make it to the beach.
If you have a sandpit – even a small one – consider giving it a summer revamp with water troughs placed nearby, deck chairs and beach blankets, ice pops in the afternoons (I bought my own reusable silicone ice pop tubes, that can go in the dishwasher – much cheaper and more eco-friendly), big baskets of shells to play with, colourful homemade windmills and much more.
Make up a summer playlist – choosing tunes that your children will recognise from their own home culture – add a Bluetooth speaker, and children will get pretty closer to that full summer holiday vibe!
Summer is also peak bug season. I’ve tried all sorts of anti-bug gadgets over the years, but my current favourite for summer camp is a small container with a hole in the side that we hang from a tree. With a spoonful of honey in the bottom, it attracts wasps, which get stuck in there and can’t get out.
However, the truly eco-friendly way to manage insects is to welcome into your setting’s garden the small mammals that eat them – such as hedgehogs and birds.
