Tag: outdoor nursery

In the Woods

A space for nature….

Manager

Creating a nature table in your home

A shelf displaying items from Autumn including flowers, leaves, seeds and berries

A nature table is somewhere dedicated to the display of found, natural objects. It can be as simple as a space to put the piles of leaves/ conkers/ stones and other items collected on a walk, as complex as a detailed seasonal scene complete with animals and other characters…and many things in between. It can be chaotic or organised, a fixed collection added to over time or ever changing. And it doesn’t have to be a table – a shelf, windowsill or alcove works brilliantly.

The idea of a nature table comes partly from the Steiner tradition, with the concept of ‘bringing the outside in’ and having a focus on nature as our main teacher and source of knowledge about the world (also a Secret Garden principle.) The practice also harks back to the much older human practise of gathering and collecting not just edibles but useful, pretty and interesting things, which appeals to many of us adults but is also a fairly universal childhood passion. It also owes something to the concept of the home or family altar as a sacred space within the home.

A shelf displaying items celebrating the winter solstice

Why have one?

• Nature tables are a great way to create a space at home which reflects and highlights the changing seasons, a focus for children’s natural interest in the world, and a way of bringing an awareness of the cycles of life into the family and even a little bit of magic.

• The space provides somewhere to put all those treasures that are collected on walks/ holidays/ days out or that make their way home from a day in the woods at Secret Garden. Through valuing and talking about these we can develop and nourish our children’s natural biophilia (love of nature) and build their future capacity for learning and caring about the natural world. It can become a focus for and ignite new interests (we now have an entire shelf of skulls above our actual nature shelf, and I have discovered I find them as intriguing as my son does) and be a great leaping off point for other activities… if the kids (or you) are interested you can keep a collection of magnifiers/ ID charts/ swatch books nearby so things can be looked at more closely and identified. Spore prints, leaf and bark rubbings, painted stones, and whittled sticks… all these things can lead on from the nature table depending on what people are inspired by and interested in.

• There are great mental and physical health benefits to being outside and foraging/ creating with natural materials, the nature table can inspire more of this and is a really good habit to embed into family life and for the children to build on as they grow up

• It’s really fun and creative, every family does it differently and as time goes on the children can really take ownership of it by suggesting ideas/ bringing things to contribute/ changing and decorating the space (be prepared for a few plastic dinosaurs/ toy cars to creep in…!)

A shelf displaying items celebrating Easter including painted eggs and animals

What do you do?

Make sure your chosen space is at child eye level or below, so they can really see it and be involved.

Start simple – leaves/ flowers/ sticks/ pine cones/ stones/ moss/ – appreciate the natural beauty and interest in these things, try to display them so they can really be appreciated. Over time you might hang onto a few particularly handy things – a nice bit of root/ a chunky stone/ a branch because they’re good for creating displays and can become semi permanent features – but it can also be nice to switch things up fairly often to make space for new things.

You can change the whole thing every so often to reflect a new season or festival, or you can just keep adding and taking things away to create a rolling seasonal collection.

If you’re religious you can bring in symbolism from your yearly festivals… if not, or as well, you can have an awareness of the seasonal cycle of solstices and equinoxes and some of the associated festivals like hallowe’en, and use the space to celebrate these in a nature focused way.

I found my kids really liked having/ creating traditions, eg we always make a special Spring Equinox / Easter tree and hang painted eggs on a tree branch, and we make a special ‘advent’ nature shelf each December with ivy, pine, holly etc and stick a gold star up each day culminating at Winter Solstice with 21 gold stars on a blue velvet background (an old pair of tracksuit bottoms!) In this way we can acknowledge both the old earth festivals and their modern equivalents, bringing a sense of celebration and appreciation to every season. Traditions and favourites will emerge for your family over time and it can be lovely to save things you’ve made from one year to the next (painted blown eggs/ paper stars/ special pictures) so they can come out again and again.

Adding in other elements can work really well… a bowl with water, a candle for fire or a picture of the sun, a handheld wind spinner… bring your imagination and sense of fun and creativity to the party!

A shelf displaying items gathered from nature in winter including spruce twigs, seeds and small logs and sticks

Handy resources

• coloured cloths or paper for hanging as backgrounds or laying down as a surface to place things on – nice to change these with the seasons eg pale yellows/ greens/ pinks for spring, bright greens/oranges/reds for summer, pale blues/ whites for winter

• Little wooden or plastic animals or birds eg lambs for spring, crows/ owls for winter…

• Bowls/ baskets/ jars/ trays to display things in and on

• It can be nice to add in wee characters eg flower fairies in spring/ summer, or gnomes/ angels towards Christmas… you can build a collection as time goes on

• If you’re crafty, you can get into making nice backgrounds/ threading berries/ making little autumn animal creatures from conkers, cutting out coloured card to make background pictures etc

• If you’re into the science you can have magnifying glasses/ growing projects/ ID charts etc to hand

A shelf displaying items celebrating summer including lavender flowers, paper birds and bees and twigs

Things to watch out for…

Be aware of your impact when collecting, are you taking things that are important food/ bedding/ protection for someone or something? Many species rely on dead/ fallen wood… moss grows very slowly… might the bird come back and use the nest again? Nuts are pretty but also the squirrels need them… do your gathering with care and use it as an opportunity to have those conversations and build awareness about the other species we share the land with. Good also to be aware that there are nature protection laws around taking any wild birds eggs, picking certain flowers, and collecting bones from protected species (eg otters) so inform yourself of these and if in doubt, don’t.

There isn’t really much that can go wrong but a few pitfalls to avoid include:

Being over precious – keep your sense of humour and make sure the kids get to feel like its their space too… even if you have just spent ages perfecting an idyllic autumn scene only for them to park a fire engine in the middle!! Finding ways to catch their interest but keep it nature focused is a good approach – spend time making things to go on there, or arranging things together. Special ‘collecting walks’ are fun too.

Look out for abandoning things too long to go mouldy! (easily done in summer when everyone’s outside a lot, or in autumn when piles of damp leaves and conkers can fester) I have found our nature shelf is at its most vibrant in spring and autumn when there’s a lot of change in the natural world, and we are at home enough or in a routine enough to pay attention to it – in the summer it tends to get neglected, with holidays and being outside a lot more anyway and in the winter it can stagnate a little but those evergreens can handle it!

Further reading, inspiration & resources

Natures playground – Danks & Schofield

All year round – A Calendar of Celebrations Marije Rowling (Hawthorn Press – good for lots of other Steiner resources)

Crafts through the year T & P Berger (Floris Books (ditto) )

Coyotes Guide to Nature Connection Jon Young (For a deeper dive into Nature Connection)

FSC fold out ID charts / field guides (www.field-studies-council.org) Woodland Trust swatch books (www.woodlandtrust.org)

Myriad Toys and Crafts – online shop for Steiner waldorf resources/ felt flower fairies/ wooden animals plus blog https://myriadonline.co.uk/blog/season-table-nature-corner-why-how

“Its fun to put all the different decorations up and change it around depending on the seasons, and also its just a nice thing to have in the house” (quote from Phoebe aged 10)

By Anna Kinross with editing and extra inspiration from Mazz Brown

In the Woods

Filling Bellies not Bins

Manager

By Mazz Brown with kind contributions from Anna Kinross

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Did you celebrate Zero Waste Week?

We painted our faces with berry juice, banged drums with celery drumsticks and fashioned bunting from beautiful streamers of carrot peel (one of these statements is almost true…)

Inspired by this brilliant initiative- very much in alignment with our values- here at the Secret Garden we did in fact use it as an opportunity to think about how we are eating, how our energy needs at this time of year are changing while we’re in the woods, and how to try and save as much as possible from the compost and rubbish bins.

It was an indecisive summer, capricious weather softening into an autumn that announced its presence mildly. While some fruits and vegetables have stretched their harvests beyond the traditional window, others have been and gone in a skylight.

At the Secret Garden, perfectly ripe raspberries were still being devoured in the second week of October from bushes sparse of leaf. Brambles and elderberries have almost gone, while elsewhere tomatoes still ripen on the vine.

Such eye-watering abundance of some crops juxtaposed with limited time to make use of others can be tricky to manage and throw up some challenges when it comes to reducing waste.

There are a wealth of good recipe ideas here, as well as a handy tool if you happen to have a glut of any one thing:

Due to significant efforts on the part of every age group involved in the Secret Garden community, we have seen the Grow Your Own Snack initiative through from germination to fruition; securing funding, building and planting up new raised beds, sourcing new cooking equipment and upskilling staff, volunteers and children alike.

There has been a lovely feeling of the cycle completing as we have enjoyed this bounty, supplementing our snack provision with more variety, and demonstrably emboldening the children to try new things. One staff member reports seeing children consuming mouthful after mouthful of chard, even arriving in the park at the end of the day still clutching and chewing vegetables from the garden!

Here at the nursery, crumbles and soups have been an excellent, nutritious and relatively straightforward way to use up our produce, and have been a hit with the children, who appear to really relish the chance to help with the picking, preparing, cooking and tasting.

Next, pumpkins, possibly one of the most intimidatingly fibrous of all vegetables, have had their short-lived time in the spotlight-quite literally, when carved into lanterns. But they are an excellent source of nutrients and also give immune systems a timely boost:

As well as the above recipe ideas, pumpkin seeds can be seasoned and roasted for a tasty snack, flesh diced for one-pan traybakes with any type of sausage, or steamed and pureed to make scones, cakes or pies.

The days are shortening, and as the wind regains its edge, we are also inclined to look at the lunches we all bring from home to enjoy in the woods, and how these can best support our ongoing health and vitality in the months to come.

On a typical day, every member of the nursery community will spend time sitting down, sometimes for long periods if they are immersed in play. As no season should put a stop to this, we find that warm and energy-rich foods are particularly beneficial for keeping metabolisms ticking along happily, imaginations firing and faces smiling.

Porridge, beans, pasta, soup, leftover stew or casserole in an insulated thermos are all excellent, popular options.

For children who are completely resistant to warm foods whatever the weather, a flask of warm juice, hot chocolate or tea is a great accompaniment to their cold lunch.

“I love a cuppa tea,” a five year old Secret Gardener reliably informed us recently.

How we transport our food is another thing we must always consider. The scourge of single-use plastic is everywhere and almost impossible to avoid. In our snack provision, the majority of the food we provide is stored in reusable containers, yet there is still an unavoidable element of waste that cannot be reused or recycled.

Being where we are, in an entirely rubbish-bin free woodland with the onus on us to take away what we don’t need, we frequently reflect on how much waste we are all personally bringing, and how to reduce this as much as possible.

Home baking is a great way to help with this, particularly in the cooler months when carbohydrate needs are increased. This is an excellent choice for so many reasons; almost all children love to help and may also be more inclined to eat something they have helped prepare, having autonomy over ingredients enables full control nutritionally, as well as alleviating worry over any dietary restrictions/allergies, baking can be done in bulk and frozen in appropriate portions for a quick addition to lunchboxes, and packaging at home allows you to reject plastic in favour of more sustainable materials.

Metal tiffin boxes, Tupperware, thermoses and wax wraps are all welcome and frequent visitors to the woods, washable and reusable-as well as another opportunity for children to exert their independence in looking after their belongings, as these will all return home.

This recipe from the Secret Garden cookbook is a great example of a nutritionally dense, easily portionable and allergen-free option, kindly donated from the Pillars of Hercules farm shop and cafe. Feel free to substitute with other types of fruit/seeds if preferred.

Further resources:

https://www.nutrition.org.uk/nutrition-for/toddlers-and-pre-school

https://thebigplasticcount.com

Food & Growing