“YAY, its outdoor kindy week” were the first words that came out of one of our excited children’s mouths this morning as they climbed bleary eyed out of bed.  After a glorious couple of weeks of being teased by the gentle warmth of spring this mornings forecast was for a typical late winters day.  Cool temperatures and showers.  The winter woollies were pulled back out, and waterproof clothing packed in readiness and mother nature didn’t disappoint.

The morning was rather damp, but once the showers cleared the day was mild and perfect for everything we threw at it.  Children arrived in a variety of coats and waterproof pants.  One little person also had the coolest coat – personalised with drawings from her mum and dad….

One of our favourite parts of outdoor week is the campfire.  Its a place to gather, a place to seek warmth, a place to sit and chat, a place to cook and a place to experience all the awe and wonder that only a fire can provide.  Usually a big part of our preparation for outdoor week with the children is choosing a spot for our campfire and preparing the area, raking away the barkchips and digging out a safe area in which to light our fire. The lead up to this week has been a little different.  A recent ‘upgrade’ to our outdoor area, which included the addition of a significant amount of softfall meant there was no practical way we would be able to create our fire area.  After much discussion … did we really value the fire as an integral part of the programme? – YES; could we find another area in the outdoor space that would be suitable for creating a fire pit, and not create irreversible damage?, NO;  our solution? ….. we made the decision to purchase a large fire pit.  After some shopping around we found exactly what we needed and at a great price. ( we got ours from a local Adelaide company in2stoneandpaving )  Before we knew it, we had one of our awesome kindy dads from last year picking it up and delivering it to us.  The big excitement of this morning was finally getting to light up our brand new firepit. It was awesome watching those very first flames flicker to life and the fire burn steadily all day….

We were very used to cooking on our usual campfire, so todays challenge was working with this new fire pit.  Learning what the bbq plate cooked like, working out where the best place to put the kettle and soup pot would be, and excitedly discovering that if we tucked food right under the outside of the bowl there was sufficient heat once the fire had been burning for a few hours to even bake half a pumpkin to perfection!

Sausages sizzled,

the smell of hot buttered fruit toast filled the air,

flat bread was measured, mixed, rolled, cooked and eaten.

We cooked off chicken bones and garlic and the children chopped vegetables, and collected herbs to make a steaming pot of chicken stock ready for a pot of vegetable soup tomorrow.

Of course no fire would be complete with out the cooking of sweet sticky marshmallows to finish our day.

As always the yard was buzzing with excited, engaged children all day.

They explored textiles….

and moved loose parts from place to place…

we had a dinosaur with us for the morning….

and some children keen to keep an eye on the passing of time….

There was some serious play adventures to be undertaken.  A stage was created by a group of children intent on putting on a performance for us all…

A couple of amazing swings were created with rope, sticks and an old sheet and strung from the swing frame…

Our new road rocks were placed one after the other to create a meandering series of roads…

The hot glue guns were carefully mastered and the children created to their hearts content….

The woodwork table drew a crowd all day as children hammered, explored our new hand drill, screwed and glued up a variety of creatures and other creations….

Muddy puddles kitchen was a hive of activity.  Todays loose parts that made their way up there included baskets of flowers and petals to pull apart, mix, stir and delight the sense of smell as well as a huge box of over ripe lemons to cut, squeeze, taste, stir and make all manner of delicious muddy creations with….

and the water course was a great place to jump in puddles…

We also had the pleasure of hosting a small group of staff from Happy Valley Kindergarten. Amy joined us last outdoor kindy week, work shadowing Lee as part of a leadership mentoring programme. Today she returned with several of her team to spend a day actively involved in the programme with the staff and children.

We had a delivery of bark chips to scoop, load, cart and spread on the other side of the outdoor area….

A group of children who had been exploring alot of things about seeds over the past few weeks with our student teacher Jane, worked together and created some bird feeders to hang in the trees…

With all that cooking and creating going on there were dishes to be washed and dried…

group times around the fire…

and rest time in the fresh air…

Everyone had a day full of awesome experiences, they were engaged and happy and so involved in their play it was often difficult to find anyone to help out with the cooking etc!!!  Our day ended with the children and parents enjoying some songs on the amazing stage from some of the children before they went home for a good nights sleep…all ready for another day of outdoor kindy tomorrow!