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Autumn is one of the most beautiful times of year. 

Here we share 50 play activities for you to get inspiration from. Some wonderful ideas for your left over pumpkins too - not just for Halloween!

You can also find weekly nature planning ideas and invitations to play in my Rewilding Nature Study Programme

A Gentle Reminder Before You Begin 🌿

It can be tempting to look at a long list of activities and feel like you should do them all. But the Hygge approach is about slowing down, not speeding up.

Children don’t need a packed timetable. What they need is:

• Experiences linked to their current skills (what they are practising right now).

• Play that reflects their interests (what lights them up and holds their attention).

• Learning that grows from what we already know about them as individuals.

✨ Instead of rushing through all 50 ideas, choose just a few as seasonal hooks. Perhaps puddle jumping, conkers, or pumpkins. Offer these gently over the season, observe where t...

Create your own rock pool in your setting to explore. This is one of the ideas shared in my Rewilding Wanderlust Nature Study Programme. 

You will need;

• sensory tray (any tray will do)

• sand

• pebbles

• shells

• sea creatures - paint rocks if you don't have any

You can lay out the items required for the children to create it themselves or do it as a collaborative task.

1. Simply add sand to your tray creating a circular space in the middle to pour your water

2. Add pebbles

3. Add water to the centre where there is no sand. The water will soak into the sand surrounding but this is totally natural.

4. Add shells

5. Add some sea creatures or perhaps children could make some rock painted crabs or fish to add? 

We added blue food colouring to the water to give it a more blue ocean colour but you don't have to.

Tag me on socials if you give this a go.

Find out more about my courses on my website.

Lavender is a versatile herb with numerous properties beneficial to health, wellness, and everyday life. Its calming aroma, therapeutic benefits, culinary uses, and role in personal care and household products make it a valuable and widely appreciated plant.

Lavender can be grown from seed and is a great sensory ingredient to explore. It attracts pollinators like bees and butterflies, making it a beneficial plant for your garden. Add it to playdough, potions, make lavender perfume or dry it and add sachets to your room indoors to create a beautiful calming scent. Lavender oil has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties, making it useful for treating minor burns, insect bites, and skin irritations. You can also use it in cooking and natural cleaning products. Lavender has a calming effect, relaxing you, aiding sleep and reducing stress and anxiety.

Encouraging children to get outdoors in nature with a fun activity that will keep them engaged.

Create a nature Journal with your children to help them have a better understanding of nature and to encourage them to ask questions about the nature that surrounds them.

Go on a walk to the park, forest, pond, stream, woodland, beach. Use your journal to make notes and draw what you find most interesting. Write down what you see and hear, stick special leaves and flowers that you find in. Draw around leaves and create leaf and bark rubbings on the pages.

Take some watercolours and crayons to use - what colours can you see?  Take this journal with you over the summer holidays to make a record of the adventures you have been on and the nature that you have found. Take it to the beach and draw shells, fish and seabirds. Take it to the pond and sketch the tadpoles, frogs and ducks. Stick any feathers that you find into your journal. Stick in a photo of you collecting natural treasures or j...

Here are 6 simple and engaging daisy-themed activities for children:

1. Daisy Chains

Collect fresh daisies with long stems. Make a small slit near the base of each stem using your fingernail then thread the next daisy’s stem through the slit and repeat to create a chain.

2. Daisy Painting

Pour a small amount of white, yellow and green paint. Show children how to dip their thumbs in white paint and press them onto paper to create daisy petals. Use a fingertip dipped in yellow paint to make the center of each daisy. Add stalks with green.

3. Daisy Planting

Plant some seeds and look after them until they grow. Ox Eye daisies are a lovely alternative as they are much bigger.

4. Daisy Mud Pies in the Mud Kitchen

Create mud pies and buns in the mud kitchen and decorate with daisies! You could make a daisy potion.

5. Daisy Counting Game

Simply count your daisies on a ten frame or in a line. How many can you count?

6. Daisy Playdough

Add Daisies to your playdough station.

 ...

Young children love to be free and take off their clothes. Yet we can be so quick to cover them up, especially their feet! Children in the UK are often given shoes even before they can walk. 

Being barefoot is so beneficial and we feel so much of the world through our feet. A study in the journal 'Frontiers in Pediatrics' has shown that children who spend most of their time barefoot have increased motor skills and are better in jumping and balancing. 

Many teachers and forest school leaders here in the U.K share their experiences of children lacking in co-ordination and balance when moving around the uneven forest floor. 

When we spend time indoors we are greatly limiting the types of surfaces children learn to walk on and get used to moving around on. These are normally smooth and firm with no roughness or bumps.

When we take our shoes and socks off outdoors we are also connecting our bodies directly to nature which benefits our wellbeing too. Helping our mental health and bring...

Seeing their own reflection in a mirror is magical and wonderous for babies. Do they recognise themselves? The awe and wonder of what else is reflected in the mirror, perhaps a parent, a favourite toy and their surroundings. Taking mirrors outdoors adds another dimension such as the trees, flora and fauna, the sky and clouds are also all reflected magically in the mirror. Babies will gaze for a long time into a mirror tray for example - trying to touch what they can see.

5 reasons why mirror play is important for babies:

1. Helping to develop visual senses

2. Encouraging gross motor movement - inspiring babies to reach and touch

Add some nature to a mirror tray, or droplets of water. This encourages sensory exploration, inviting them to reach out and touch the mirror and the items. Why not put on some music and have a little dance with your baby in front of the mirror. This is a fun way to encourage movement and coordination.

3. Developing a sense of self

Babies will start...

“Drizzle happiness wherever you go.”  A.D. Posey

Drizzle, damp and dreary weather may not have you excited for getting out into the outdoors with your children! In this blog post I want to share a few ideas of how you can turn the situation around and find joy on these types of days!

There is no such thing as bad weather only unsuitable clothing!

Embrace the rain! Dress for it - don the rainsuits and wellies, grab your brollies and go for a walk in the rain, splashing in the puddles as you go.

Walking under trees in the rain you can listen to the rain hitting the leaves above you. Look at the clouds, what colour are they? What can you smell? 

Embrace the rain and play with your water wall - these are easy to make with old guttering and a wooden pallet. Perhaps re create the nursery rhyme Ice Wincy Spider.

You don't have to be out for long.

When you get back from your adventures outside here are some cosy and warm ideas to enjoy:

1. Discuss why it rains and weather in gene...

The latest research from the University of British Columbia (UBC) shows that children living in areas with access to increased greenspaces can set them up for greater success in life and help them meet their early years developmental milestones.

Researchers at the UBC faculty of forestry and faculty of medicine analyzed the developmental scores of 27,372 children in Metro Vancouver who attended kindergarten between 2005 and 2011.They looked at the amount of greenspace around each child's home from ages birth to five and also assessed traffic levels, community noise and air pollution. 

“Most of the children were doing well in their development, in terms of language skills, cognitive capacity, socialization and other outcomes,” says study author Ingrid JarvisI, a PhD candidate in the department of forest and conservation sciences at UBC. “But what’s interesting is that those children living in a residential location with more vegetation and richer natural environments showed better o...