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 Batch cook some delicious meals

 Take a woodland walk

 Create some natural displays in your home and setting with pumpkins, squash, twigs, pine cones and acorns.

 Make a blackberry crumble

 Hang an autumn wreath on your door at home and setting

 Fill jars with autumn leaves and fairy lights

 Make a gratitude list and be thankful for the moments and things you have

 Set up a seasonal small world scene of your local area

 Add seasonal items and books to your nature shelf

 For more seasonal ideas see my Re-Wilding your Wanderlust Child Nature Study Programme 

Some books to inspire you: 

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.

Try these Hygge Nature Crafts for Children. Some wonderful nature-based craft ideas to inspire you.

1. Make a stick nest

Add a pine cone bird - pine cone with feather for a tail and wings

2. Clay or playdough Faces

Use homemade playdough or air dry clay to create creatures and faces on the bark of trees.

3. Bark Rubbings

Create bark rubbings or leaf rubbings then use them in your other craft activities - perhaps on your nature bracelet or wand?

4. Flower Pressing

Flower pressing has long been a wonderful nature craft activity. If you don't have a press just use heavy book lined with paper to press your flowers. These can then be used in crafts later in the year - perhaps on a Cosy Hygge Jar with fairy lights inside?

Or, create an air dry clay trinket bowl with your pressed flowers stuck on with a layer of pva on top to protect them.

Or, add them to candles to decorate them.

5. Leaf and Stick Butterflies/dragonflies

A cute nature craft using nature.

6. Hessian R...

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.

The entrance to Nursery at Spring Lane Primary School

The entrance doors to Reception at Bourton Meadow Academy

The entrance to Nursery at George Grenville Academy

Part of the entrance display for Nursery at Lace Hill Academy

A welcome display for Reception at Lumbertubs Primary School

Our welcoming environments were inspired by a Hygge approach.

What is 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 e...

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’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 made. With all the interiors created b...

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...

A time of coming together with a slower approach

🌼 Midsummer in Sweden: A Celebration of Light, Nature & Togetherness

Midsummer in Sweden is one of the most magical and meaningful times of the year. Falling on June 21st, it marks the summer solstice—a time when the sun barely dips below the horizon. In the northernmost parts of Scandinavia, it doesn’t set at all!

✨ A Tradition Rooted in Magic & Fertility

Going back to the 1500s, Midsummer was seen as a mystical period when fertility levels—of both the land and people—were at their peak. Swedes would decorate the outside of their homes and farms with lush green foliage to honour nature’s bounty and bring good fortune.

As Sweden moved into the industrial age, Midsummer became a special time for community. Mill workers would gather for a hearty feast—pickled herring being the star of the table, a tradition that’s still going strong today!

🌸 Floral Crowns, Maypole Dancing & Feasting

In more recent times, Midsummer has blossomed...

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...