Gardening & Treasure Hunts!

The pre school children have really enjoyed helping to do some gardening in our growing area. Whilst helping to turn over the soil, they discovered lots of potatoes and carrots that had been growing in there over the winter. Francis dug himself a potato from the soil and took it inside to the kitchen, offering it to Rebecca, suggesting, “You can use this for our lunch”. The children were discussing lots of food options that we could make that would contain the potatoes and carrots. Riley suggested, “I know, we can make a potato and carrot soup, that would be delicious”.

The children then went on to making their very own potato and carrot recipes in the mud kitchen, Henry made a potato pie whilst Jessica made a carrot cake. Tomas, Leo, Fabian and Joshua set up a camp fire to cook the potatoes and carrots, using the sticks and bricks to place around their campfire and telling all of their friends, “You need to stand back, it might be too hot”. The children also helped to plant some new seeds and have taken a very keen interest in wanting to look after them, Vivienne reminding us daily, “We need to put some water on our seeds so they can grow”.

The children have also took part in a very exciting treasure hunt in our garden, following an actual treasure map drawn on some paper. The small dinosaurs had been hidden as treasure around the garden and the ‘x’s were marked on the map as to where they had been hidden. Ezmie, Vivienne, Emma and William concentrated really well to position the map and work out in the garden where they thought the ‘x’ mark represented. They started off at the sand pit, and very quickly worked out there was an x just behind them in the toy shed and found the dinosaur instantly! Ezmie said, “That was super easy to find”. They went on to find a couple more positioned at the back of the garden, again, following the map carefully. They had picked up several more children along the way who were very interested as to what they were doing and after Ezmie explaining to them what they were doing, Ada went on to find some in the water tray. Ari found the ones in the tree house and with only a couple left to find in more hidden areas, Ezmie told her friends, “Maybe that wasn’t so easy!” and started to laugh.