outdoor play – Tracie's Treasures

Garden Classroom, healthy body and mind, Outdoor Curriculum, outdoor play, Uncategorized, water play

Water Discovery and STEM

Posted on 20th Mar 2026 by Tracie Dowling

Combining natural elements like shells, pebbles, pinecones, and seaweed with a “discovery waterfall” creates a rich, sensory-driven learning environment for under fives. This type of open-ended play fosters curiosity about the natural world while developing critical fine motor skills through scooping and pouring.

We created a water play station with a water pump and half barrel this is a fantastic way for us to introduce STEM concepts like cause-and-effect and fluid dynamics.

We decided to use a Manual Hand Pump, this was to provide an activity for the children to build on their gross motor skills.

We looked at different types of vessels to hold the water, im the end we decided to use a large reclaimed half barrel. This was chosen as it is extremely sturdy, has a wide base for the water to be pumped into and won’t tip over by the rough handling of the children.

Setting up the Water Play

Tools to Include: we used items from around the house such as funnels, sieves, colanders, whisks, and empty plastic bottles of different sizes.
Enhancements: To keep things fresh, you can add food colouring to the water, or introduce new textures like ice cubes or shaving foam.
Safety: Always provide constant adult supervisionduring water play, even in shallow water

Activities:

Strategically placed pebbles and shells were put at the bottom of the waterfall trough’s to see how they change colour when wet.
Buoyancy Testing: the children drop pine cones and seaweed into the top of the waterfall and watch them move down the large bamboo runners. Pinecones typically float initially, while wet seaweed draped over the rocks and pebbles, demonstrating how different textures interact with moving water.
Sensory “Rock Pool”: the shallow tray at the base of the waterfall creates a miniature ecosystem with the pebbles and seaweed. We added toy sea creatures to encourage imaginative “underwater” role play.
Waterfall Sculpting: For a messier experience, we added sand to the base. The Children can use the falling water to wet the sand, then use shellsand pinecones as natural stamps or decorations for “sand mud pies”.

The activities and learning opportunities are endless and the children are totally thrilled with their newest play area.

Uncategorized

The New Garden Classroom: Planning and Preparation

Posted on 19th Jul 2025 by Tracie Dowling

Gardening has many benefits for children and adults alike. While their has great health and social implications, it also provides amazing hands on experiences for learning and can incorporate every aspect of the EYFS https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-foundation-stage-framework–2

My childminding practice has always been a ‘Garden Classroom’ curriculum and I strive to make the environment accessible and an engaging experience for all children.

When I moved to my home, the main attraction was the garden and the garden summerhouse. Unfortunately not long after I moved in, it became obvious the summer house was not safe enough to use and we had to take it down.

Since taking down the summer house it has been my dream to build a stronger, bigger outdoor classroom. We have been planning since that day and 7 years later we have been given the opportunity to make our vision come true.

The opportunity to apply for a grant from the local council came up in May 2025. This grant was offered to settings in Liverpool to enable them to expand settings and provide new places for children under 5 years of age to access quality education.

The children and I took a visit to the local Garden Center to look at various types of garden buildings. This gave us an idea of space, materials and what we would like the classroom to look like. This information all helped when putting the bid together.

We worked hard putting into place the documentation to provide evidence on how we attend to expand our setting. luckily as we had been on our planning Journey over the last few years this part of the plan was in place. It took us another three weeks and a visit from a council representative to put the policies, financial information information and evidence into place to submit to the decision board.

By the end of June we were given the amazing news that we had been successful with the main part of our bid. This was on the premise we can supply further information regarding the company we had chosen to work with and raise the extra funding needed to cover the entire project. We researched another two building companies to gain more information and chose to go with Eon from ‘All good in the wood’ https://www.allgoodinthewood.co.uk/

‘Who we are, Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We’re a vegan-owned business that keeps our community involved with our local trading system. We’re proud of our products being locally sourced, locally finished and installed by local tradespeople, keeping our community personally involved from start to finish! We know exactly where every tabletop, fence post or roof shingle came from and where the trees grew. Call it our sustainable family tree.’

“Ancient trees are precious. There is little else on Earth that plays host to such a rich community of life within a single living organism.” — Sir David Attenborough

balancing skills, listening skills, Instructions, bug hunt, childminding, communication, conversations, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, outdoor play, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, water play, wildlife

This Week In The Garden Classroom

Posted on 10th May 2024 by Tracie Dowling

We have loved getting outdoors and sowing some salad crops. We mixed the peat free compost, filled the pots, sowed the seeds and gently watered them in to germinate.

Alba Mixing The Vermiculite Into The Compost

We had fun looking around the garden for bugs, we found snails, ants, butterflies, a dragonfly, wood louse, worm and Fizzy our cat asleep in the shade. Mable and Elliott thought the yellow poppies were pretty.

We had a lovely time in the garden, we are excited to see our seeds germinate and turn into delicious salad crops, so we can have them for lunch.

childminding, communication, conversations, Garden Classroom, outdoor play, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, Uncategorized

Stanley Park

Posted on 25th Apr 2024 by Tracie Dowling

Today we had a lovely day at Stanley Park. We walked through the rose garden to the play park.

Ayrn was so clever and determined to climb the stairs to go down the slide.

Mable and Elliott loved playing and are both confident enough to climb up and go down the slide independently.

Alba enjoyed using the climbing wall, pole and ropes.

After we left the play park we went for a walk to find as many different coloured plants and flowers as we can.

The children looked everywhere, up high, down low, near the pond, over the bridge and through the wildflower meadow. (Sounds like the makings of a brilliant book lol)These photos above are the plants we found.

We decided next to have a race on the playing field.

After our race we all needed to have a rest, some water and a biscuit. What a lovely sunny day out we had.

childminding, Garden Classroom, Seedlings, Uncategorized

Our Spring Growing Has Started

Posted on 20th Mar 2024 by Tracie Dowling

Last week we sowed our first ‘Salad Pots’

First we needed to clean the pots to get rid of any bacteria or decease from last years plants.

We then put coco disks into the pots and added the seeds.

We chose salad and herb crops because they are fast growing and we love cooking and eating them. We added water and watched as the disks filled out and firmed the seeds down.

We covered the pots with cling film to help them keep the humidity to germinate the seeds.

One Week Later….

We had a look in our salad pots to see if any of the seeds had germinated.

In Jacks pot we found a Cucumber seed had grown, it had reached over 1 inch tall.

Tracie very carefully picked up the seedlings in the coco disk and showed us the roots coming out of the disk.

Alba said ‘yuck they are long and wiggly like a worm!”

We then looked in Alba’s Salad Pot, we were surprised to see that her Cucumber had not started to grow. However she had two healthy Tomato plants growing. These were about 1/2 an inch tall.

We decided to move the Cucumber and Tomato seedlings into a bigger pot and leave the herbs in the long salad pots. This was to give them extra space to grow healthy root stock.

We recycled glass jars to cover the seedlings. This was to help them keep the plant warm and to encourage them to grow healthy and strong.

Once we had repotted the seedlings we covered the other coco disks with fresh nutrient rich soil to encourage them to start germinating.

childminding, christmas activities, communication, conversations, Garden Classroom, outdoor play, Uncategorized

Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

Posted on 2nd Jan 202427th Feb 2024 by Tracie Dowling

Today when we all woke up we had a lovely surprise… snow! White fluffy snow.

Poppy was not very happy because she wanted to stay home and play in the snow! She had to walk to school as the bus was cancelled, but she enjoyed walking in the snow. When she got to school there was a big fun snowball fight.

Chloe was happy because her school was closed, she went to the park with her mum and brothers. Ben loved the Canada Geese, one went up to him and ate the bread from his hand. Jack and Chloe loved snow ball fighting, but didn’t like getting so cold.

After breakfast we all got our coats, scarves and gloves on and went for a walk in the back garden.

Martie made some amazing hand prints in the snow that had settled on a toy box.

childminding, communication, conversations, healthy body and mind, language, number games, outdoor play, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, speech, Uncategorized

Posted on 24th Nov 202313th Dec 2023 by Tracie Dowling

childminding, conversations, Farmer Teds Farm, forest school, Garden Classroom, Go Kart Racing, number games, outdoor play, pumpkins, rangers, Seedlings, Uncategorized, wildlife

Pumpkin Play

Posted on 23rd Oct 202313th Dec 2023 by Tracie Dowling

We had fun this week with the Pumpkin’s, heres a little gallery of our activities.

We went to Teds Farm Pumpkin Patch to choose some Big ones to carve out.

We all had a fun day out and can’t wait to go again next year.

childminding, communication, conversations, family, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, outdoor play, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, speech, Uncategorized, wildlife

Fun in the Garden

Posted on 24th Jul 202325th Jul 2023 by Tracie Dowling

We have so much fun learning and playing in our garden at Tracie’s Treasures. I want to share some of my favourite films from the last couple of months.

In this film Jack is looking in our small barrel pond he is investigating what lives in there. He finds YUK

Jack Exploring In The Half Barrel Pond

George and the girls walk around the garden to check for bugs, George sings ‘Barbie Girl’ all the way around.

George Singing Barbie Girl

Mr Black Bird Having A Bath

This funny clip George is singing again as usual. This time he is singing to a Snail about being gorgeous.

George Singing ‘Your Beautiful’ To A Snail

My favourite time of day, looking in the greenhouses to see whats growing.

Elsie, Grace and Georgia Looking In The Greenhouse

Hope you enjoyed the films, the children here are amazing.

bug hunt, childminding, family, frog Spawn, frogs, Garden Classroom, Honey Bees, Bees, Great British Bees, outdoor play, Seedlings, wanderers, wildlife

What Did We Find This Week In The Garden?

Posted on 25th Jun 20235th Jul 2023 by Tracie Dowling

George went first to find a treasure in the garden today. He ran around a few times then finally stopped at this amazing flower! He said “its a snowball!” I explained that its an Onion flower. He said “yuk I don’t like onions” then ran off to play.

Elsie chose this amazing Peony, unfortunately it had a baby spider inside one of the petals so off went Elsie in a tizzy.

Jack found this amazing Poppy he smelt it and said ‘Wow!” He loved the Ladybird crawling up the stalk and ran inside for a magnifying glass. He came back and studied the ladybird. He asked me to help him pick up the ladybird and put it in a Jar. We gave the ladybird some leaves and sticks and made him a lovely home.

Jack then went off magnifying glass in hand to find some more ladybirds to put in the jar so they could be freinds.

Jack was still on a bug hunt so Elsie decided to join in. Both of the children looked for frogs they were disappointed not to see any but overjoyed with the tadpoles.

Chloe chose this white Rose as her favourite flower of the week. Chloe also loved the pink climbing Hydrangea, it was behind the rose covering the back wall.

Tracie got excited about her water Canna which is starting to flower for the first time. The sweet-peas are coming on amazingly and have an amazing sent.