FUN TIME FRENZY

After a fun frenzy of chaotic happening’s, it’s reached the time to tell you all what I and the rest of The Outdoors Project’s team have been up to this week, but where to start...? We have had a busy half term of full holiday clubs at Hove Park, running Nerfageddon and Fortnite days whilst at Macs Farm- our base camp in Ditchling- we learnt how to tie flies and did some fly fishing for our ‘Danny Champion of the World’ day.    

Starting with our new club in Hove Park- ‘Wild Things’ is our chance to teach the older bunch skills that we don’t get the opportunity to do within the after-school clubs and it is now one of my new favourites. For my first session with them, we played ‘Man Hunt’ and the kids loved it. This is a game of stealth, where they need to creep, crawl and not be seen by the hunters who are searching for their prey. Because they are older, we can lengthen boundaries and allow them more freedom to roam through the trees and bushes that surround the climbing boulder. It was so nice to see them playing so well together and the enthusiasm they showed was heart-warming.

Wednesday was a very exciting and nervous day for me as it was the first session of the new term of our parent and toddler group that runs each week in St Anns Wells park. ‘Saplings’ has grown to be very precious to me over the past few terms because of how rewarding it can be.  A session can come together so beautifully and it’s very encouraging to you see a parent and their little one so captivated by nature. I like to start each term with an intro to the season that we are in, so of course we went on a Summer scavenger hunt for all the signs of the season. I came up with an idea that would teach them about the colours that can be seen in nature, by giving them coloured cards of: Green, Red, Blue, Orange and Yellow. When they found a piece of nature of a specific colour, they earn the colour card and we came together at the end for story time and a game of colour snap!

This takes me to the workshop I did yesterday at the Macs. An entire year group from Balfour school learnt how to be stealthy whilst playing the snake and egg game where they had to not be eaten by our shrub monster. They also learnt survival skills and how to build shelters in the woods. I ran this activity with them and we talked about why we need shelters and particularly, what things do we need to survive!? A highlight for me during the day was getting any cheeky ones to lie on the ground to demonstrate how to measure how big a shelter needs to be by using them as human rulers. This got a giggle from teachers and the rest of the group before they went off to create. Each group made great shelters of all shapes and sizes and the teamwork was fantastic. With water pistol in hand and with a huge group countdown, we tested how dry each group could stay under their forts.

I have blinked and missed this week, chaos ensued and lots of fun was had and although as I write this I feel a little tired to say the least I can wait for the summer holiday clubs and gangster granny heist…