Weekend Away Camping In Wales
Tag: childminder
Our Summer Garden Flowers Gallery
Half Term Fun
It was lovely having Emma come and help Tracie care for us, we miss her so much during term time. It was also lovely to catch up with leo and Martie who came and spent the day with us, they have grown up so much!
The weather has been so kind for us, We have spent lots of time in the garden playing, planting, hiding and relaxing.
Our Jack took advantage of the lovely summer day to play out in the front garden, he loved this hot poker flower, he pretended it was a microphone and kept us all entertained with funny rap songs.
The long flowers were an amazing yellow colour which went with his t-shirt.
Jack practiced his ball skills, we tried to have a game but the table was to small. Next time we go to the park we will take our rackets and balls as they have a tennis table there!
Lottie had a lovely time playing at Sector8 in the bouncy little ones play area. The big kids Georgia, Leo, Jack and Chloe played for a whopping 2 hours in the ‘big kids’ area.
We went for numerous walks around Stanly park. We took picnics, balls and got to play in the playground as it was very quiet.
Georgia loved playing with the Ello bricks and shapes. She made a lovely flower garden. She also made lots of crafts, this one was a pre printed princess dress, hair, shoes and gloves. Georgia then had to draw the princess’s face and join the arms and legs. It was so good she wanted to display it on the wall and make another one to take home. Georgia was so clever writing her full name on the top of the picture all by herself.
While walking around the park we kept an eye out for ‘Liverpool Kindness Rocks’ we were just about to give up when Tracie found one! She screamed and had to jump high to reach it.
We finished the week off starting our ‘30 Days Wild’ campaign by putting up bee and insects houses .we made sure the wild birds have enough clean water and seeds.
Little Gardeners: Spring into Summer.
The children have been so busy working hard sowing seeds, potting on and planting their crops.
They have been growing a vast array of fruit, veg and salad crops and we are just beginning to reap the rewards.
Last year we sowed strawberry seeds, they took a while to germinate but after a while we were so glad to see little seedlings appearing through the compost. This year they have flowered and we are so excited to eat them. We have been thinking what to have them with. Chloe wants them just the way they come, Phyllis wants afternoon tea, Tracie wants Jam and Mason wants them on pancakes! What a choice we are going to have!
This week we have potted up our tomatoes ready to take home and plant in our own gardens, in pots on our patio’s. Alba came for a visit, she took one home for her new garden.
The greenhouse is flourishing at the moment we have Loofa (to make as Christmas presents later in the year, watch out for that blog!) Our Lemon tree which we have grown from a pip has grown to about 2 feet now! We are hoping for some flowers then fruit soon.
We have summer bedding plants and Pac Choi for our stir fry’s. On the right side of the Greenhouse we are growing our baby cucumbers, We can soon have cucumber sandwiches to go with our Strawberry afternoon tea!
Behind the greenhouse we have our front garden project plants growing. We have 3 different types of Lavender plants growing ready to make a fragrant hedge later in the year.
We had a disaster last year with our cabbages. The slugs, butterflies and caterpillars decided they were going to eat them before us! We are touch wood (as Tracie says) beating them this year by growing them in a huge copper pot (apparently slugs don’t like copper) with a mesh over the top, lets hope our efforts work!
In the big veg trough we have Parsnips, Carrots, leeks, swede and Beetroot growing ready for winter vegetables. Hopefully we will produce enough to keep us in Scouse and soups all winter.
We have to be creative where we grow our vegetables and fruit as we don’t have a-lot of space. Our projects help to make our environment work for us, so we are clever and pack in fruit and veg in between the ponds, flower beds, wildlife feeding stations and play space.
We have sprouts growing in between the giant poppies, sweet peas and peas growing up netting together and our mange tout growing on wigwams.
Our lettuce is growing in rows on our decking and we have herbs in the living wall with tomatoes growing up the trellis. The only place left to play is on the washing line, even there Ive been known to hang bird feeders and hanging baskets.
Our lovely garden is packed full of planting to stimulate our five senses, smell, taste, touch, seeing and of course eating.
Bug Hunting
Today the little seedlings decided they wanted to be explorers and look for bugs.
Jacks first area of interest was the barrel pool which has a solar powered floating fountain. he quickly realised if he moved it into the shade it stopped working. he liked slapping the to of the water and splashing himself.
Elsie soon caught up with Jack and wanted to have a go but she couldn’t quite fit, she started pushing Jack out of the way. Jack edged her away, I explained to Elsie if she moved back a little Jack would be able to turn around and move to give her some space to have a turn. It was a bit tricky because by then Ruby had decided to join the children which caused a traffic Jam.
While we were looking for bugs a Ladybird flew onto Jack. He froze and looked down at it. I carefully moved the ladybird off Jack so we could all have a better look. We counted the Ladybirds spots to see how old it was. we counted 8 spots George said “its like a spider with eight legs!’
Next we found a nest of tiny baby spiders, Elsie turned and fled, shes not a fan of spiders! George and Jack where fascinated watching them scuttling about the nest until Jack decided to poked the nest and made all the spiders run in different directions, this made Jack and George feel itchy like they were crawling up their body. Yuk!!
Next on the hunt we found a buzzy bumblebee going from one yellow poppy to another. Tracie explained he was collecting pollen from the poppies. Grace said ‘ to make honeycomb’ Tracie explained that bees make Honey which can be made into honeycomb. (Good activity idea! To extend learning) George said he loves honey and asked if we will have Honey sandwiches for snack time. Nom nom
Elsie decided to go back and look in the barrel again while the others went to the pond. We were so lucky because as we got there (very quietly) a frog was having a swim. Tracie very carefully got her net and caught him so we could have a closer look!
What a busy, fun bug hunt we had today!
Today’s Weeding The Garden Ended Up A Bug Hunt!!
George came in this morning skipping full of the joys of spring, telling us how sunny it was outside. He asked if we could all go out to play in the sunshine
We decided to get out buckets and trowels to do a little weeding in the front garden because as George put it “tis a mess!”
George was so eager he went full bull in a china shop and pulled out the first flower he found, shoving it in my face. “Tracie, Tracie is this a weed?” “No George thats not a weed thats my tulip!”
“ I will take it home for my mummy she loves red roses!”
Elsie found a wiggly worm and called us over to have a look. Elsie moved on and found a snail which she described as “sticky, yuk” so I had to pick it up.
We just kept finding bugs so decided to ditch the weeding (probably safer if we want our flowers to survive George!) and turn the activity into a bug hunt.
We ended up finding, an ants nest with loads of ants marching around, a lily Beatle, lots of wood louse, a ladybird and a carrot! A carrot!! Guess who found that!!!
We went over nearer the house and found a lovely red Crocosmia, a hidden pansy, a blue Felicia and a fly on a leaf. This time it wasn’t George who found it, ‘twas Elsie’
What a lovely day out in the garden, lets hope the sun is shining tomorrow.
Making Our Own Number Blocks.
We had fun making number blocks today. We printed off 1-10 sets of leaves and a sunflower head which we stuck onto our big duplo bricks.
We first played a match the number game, the children all helped each other to place them on the corresponding number.
George was able to count up to and recognise beyond the number 10! How amazing! Now we need to print off and make leaf bricks from 11-20 so George can learn to recognise them in sequence too! Grace found numbers 1-4 and place them on top of the correct leaf, sh was so pleased with herself.
Elsie found the yellow sunflower and enjoyed building the leaves which made the flower grow bigger and bigger!
Seedling Garlic Growing
In our ‘Oddbox’ our weekly wonky vegetable box we had three garlic bulbs. We decided we didn’t need all three so we cut the top off to see if it would grow.
Grace placed it on a saucer of water and this it what happened!
We are going to have an abundance of home grown garlic to last us all year!!
Hydroponics Update
Back in January the Wonderers and Rangers started a Hydroponic experiment to see how we could grow our fruit and vegetables without using soil.
We started with three main units, 2 small table top appliances one which had built in lights and a pump system and another, a still water system with lights built in. Tracie was then very lucky to have had a third brought for a present, a vertical pump system which needed grow lights added.
The built in pump systems work by pumping water constantly around the root system moving nutrients (added to the water) and providing air flow. We found these seeds germinated quickest out of the 3 systems used. We kept a constant eye on the water levels and nutrient PH.
We found once the plants had grown their second true leaves they started to look like they were wilting. The children came to the conclusion that the lights were scorching them so we raised the lights to see if there would be any improvement.
The root system was amazing, Alfie (one of our seedlings) described them as white wiggly worms. The problem was we they were filling up the units so we decided to trim them back a little to give them room to grow. We found this made the plants less stable and they toppled over.
Chloe and Mason researched using the ipad about hydroponics and found yet another system. it was much bigger and they thought it would provide the roots more space.
We had fun building the unit together, we had to buy even more lights to go around the systems which was a bit pricey. This is essential as they provide the artificial daylight to enhance photosynthesis that plants need to enable them with added nutrients to grow big and strong.
I asked the children if they had thought about ways we can store all the crops once grow. We discussed having to stagger growing, freezing and giving their parents some to take home.
Our plant are thriving better in the bigger system. However they are getting so big again they are starting to topple over. Tracie moved one tomato plant into its own ‘homemade’ system where we add tomato feed and we are waiting to see if it helps.
We will keep you up to dates later in the year to see how it all works.
Spring Additions To Our Kitchen Garden
We’ll finally after wanting one for years we have a Green house! Whoop Whoop
However it was not easy to put together. Gemma came around to help, it took us three days of total frustration to get it together.
We had to start with the base, we soon found out we needed a wooden base for the metal one to sit on!
We tried hard to follow the instructions but they didn’t make sense! we finally got the sides up then found the window fixers wouldn’t fit!
We had to take everything apart and start again making sure the ridge was on the outside for the glass.
When we finally got it up (Chloe helped too!) we realised it wasn’t suitable for the area we had erected it, so had to take it down and then put it up AGAIN!
Finally its in place and is full of growing plants.
Tracie's Treasures 