“Strive to make everyday the best day of your life, because there is no good reason not to.” Hal Elrod
Welcome is a key word for our Early Years environments, as we welcome new parents and children to our settings and establish routines. Our practitioners continue to reflect upon how welcoming their entrances are to parents and children. Here are a few examples from last year.
Our welcoming environments were inspired by a Hygge approach.
Building a sense of togetherness between home and school reflects a Hygge approach. It is so important to us.
Positive relationships and the happiness of our parents and children are strongly linked.
Campfire Education Trust schools have worked hard to ensure that all our new starters feel a sense ofbelonging as soon as they enter their...
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.
We shouldn't be saving up hygge just for the winter, the Danes celebrate and embrace hygge all year long. They swap cosy knits and fluffy socks for getting into nature and creating simple moments for free!
Here are a few ways you might embrace hygge this weekend...
Wake up slowly and have a breakfast with the family. Take your time over breakfast, chatting about your day ahead and even light a candle(why not invest in some pastel coloured candles). This is a time to be enjoyed and not rushed! There is a big belief here on how you start your day sets you up for the rest of it. So sip your coffee slowly, open the windows and let a breeze in and enjoy this time.
Go for a morning walk into nature and try and visit a place of water. Often Danes will enjoy a morning swim outdoors (all year round!) but perhaps you could dip your toes in!
In 2016 in Copenhagen, bikes out numbered cars! Why not get on your bike this weekend and go for a family ride.
Take a trip to the seaside and hunt for shells...
We’ve just got back from a wonderful few days in Sweden. We stayed at a couple of different places; a treehouse on a farm called @traktforesthotel and a water chalet on a lake at a Swedish vineyard.
We flew Manchester to Gothenburg and then hired a Volvo.
We took a two hourish drive into the countryside to stay at Trakt Forest Hotel. Along the way we passed so many roadside wildflowers. In particular the foxgloves lining the roads along with the Cow Parsley was very pretty!
When we arrived at the Trakt Forest Hotel we checked into one of five tree houses built on the farm. These were so peaceful up in the forest and felt very private and not overlooked. There were a number of different experiences you could tag onto your stay. We added the outdoor sauna to ours. You could kayak at a local lake or take a forest bath. They all sounded wonderful but unfortunately time didn’t allow us to do all.
Our treehouse was beautifully designed and...
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...
Midsummer in Sweden
Midsummer comes on the 21st June and this is a time when it feels as though the sun never sets. In fact in northern parts of Scandinavia it doesn't!
In the 1500's this time of year was seen as a magical time where fertility levels were high. This was celebrated by the Swedes decorating the outside of their homes and farms with green foliage.
As we moved into the industrial period mill workers would come together at Midsummer for a wonderful feast of pickled herring.
More recent traditions have seen the making of floral crowns from the wildflowers and maypole dancing in the local area.
On Midsummer Day in Sweden many of these traditions remain. It's also very much a time of coming together with family and friends over delicious meals. Pickled herring is still a feature on the midsummer menu along with a grilled dish of salmon or spare ribs.
The evenings are spent gathered around a...
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.
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.
Plant some seeds and look after them until they grow. Ox Eye daisies are a lovely alternative as they are much bigger.
Create mud pies and buns in the mud kitchen and decorate with daisies! You could make a daisy potion.
Simply count your daisies on a ten frame or in a line. How many can you count?
Add Daisies to your...
The beautiful white, frothy elderflowers tend to bloom in late May, turning to
Find out more about Hygge in the...
Ah the fields are bright and yellow with the delight of buttercups! I have such fond childhood memories of spending time in the uncut fields near my house.
Whilst the buttercups are appealing, please take care as they are toxic if eaten and it's always best to handle with garden gloves on to reduce the risk of skin irritation.
1. Play hide and seek in the long swishy grass and buttercups
2. Choose a spot to just sit and observe them. Who visits them? How do they smell? Notice their shiny and reflective petals. How do you feel when you sit amongst these? Why not take a picnic?
3. Run free through a field of buttercups. Feeling the buttercups across your hands as you run.
You might be wondering where all the fancy resource set ups and invitations to play are here. Have we missed them out of this blog post?
No!
I often get asked ,'Am I not doing my...
Ladybirds are a beloved and valuable part of our natural world. It is lovely to find them in the garden or out and about in parks.
From the beetle family.
Common colors include red, yellow, and orange with black spots, but some species can be black with red or yellow spots.
There are about 5,000 species of ladybirds worldwide.
The seven-spot ladybird is one of the most familiar species in Europe.
The bright colors and spots of ladybirds serve as a warning to predators that they are toxic or distasteful.
When threatened, ladybirds can secrete a yellowish fluid from their leg joints, which has a foul taste and can deter predators.
Ladybirds are essential for natural pest control in gardens and agricultural fields, helping to reduce the need for chemical pesticides.
Ladybirds are often considered symbols of good luck and are associated with various folk beliefs and superstitions around the...