We are happy to be back

It has been a while since you have heard from us here on the blog. 

We had a lovely summer which started off well with two weeks of holiday project fun. Then it was time to say goodbye to a few children in each group who were either ready to move on or up into an older group.

After that it was already time to prepare and get ready to start again with three new group of children and volunteers in the last week of August.

It was hard not to smile when meeting new friends and reuniting with old ones:

OnTuesday morning a group of children worked together as firemen to put out "fires" whilst (re)discovering the big green space we play in every week at Murtle Estate:

Others went down to the stream for the very first time before it was time for fruit, marshmallows and hot chocolate around the fire:

Tuesday afternoon our tiniest friends came back to play in the Nature Nurture woods. All of them had done quite a bit of growing so we started off by finding bigger pairs of wellies for all the little feet before taking a new route to the woods.  The weather kept changing and one of the children wondered if the rain could please make up its mind!

It was dry and cosy in our snack area at snack time and there was plenty of food for both children and their teddies:

After snack there was time for a spontaneous game of hide and seek:

..and a rest in the hammock before returning to Mica to get changed and go back home:

Thursday morning one of the 8-11 year old children felt brave enough to try eating a nasturtium for the first time and found discovered that "it is spicy!"

Others climbed trees:

Before it was time to walk (run/jump/get a piggyback or a wheelbarrow ride) back to the room, the children had a quick game of piggy in the middle on the balancing logs altogether:

This is how you look just before returning to school after a morning in Nature Nurture:

We are happy to be back and looking forward to next week's sessions

New Year In Nature Nurture

We have had three wonderful and very different sessions with our 8-11 year old group since we returned after our Christmas break. 

New children and adults have brought a lot of good energy to the group and together with the old faces we discover new spaces to explore and play.


During the first week of February we had just enough snow to sledge down the slope at great speed.

The second week we enjoyed ice skating on the frozen puddles in the glorious sunshine and discovered a woodchip pile, which magically kept us warm if we dug down or buried ourselves in the newly chopped wood.

The third week it almost felt like Spring – the sun was out and we heard birdsong and saw hundreds of crocuses and snowdrops on the hills. Some children jumped in the muddy puddles that had been frozen just last week and got so dirty that both woodchips and leaves could stick onto their clothes whilst others tried the big rope swing for the first time or dared to go higher than ever before.

In the woods an old tree house was discovered and the boys helped each other to figure out how to crawl up into the tree in order to take the old wood down and rebuild it. It seems to be the beginning of a big project, which we hopefully will be able to continue tomorrow or perhaps when we have more time in the Holiday Project? On the bus journey back to school, some of the boys wrote down a list of materials they will need to continue the project whilst others were entertaining each other by putting on their best French, Italian (Danish and Hindi) accents!

Building a Sense of Place and a Connection with Nature

A few weeks ago one of our boys was given the task of exploring the wood beyond the boundary markers. His mission was to seek out another place where we can play as our current location is soon going to need a rest so it can recover. He was thrilled to be trusted with this important task. When he returned, rosy cheeked and excited, he was full of stories about a magical place he had found. He lead me through the 'new land' introducing me to places, trees and landscape features he had discovered. This was one of those moments when so many ideas and wishes came together in perfect harmony.... this little boy now has an enormously significant sense of place and an ownership of a piece of nature that he can now share with his friends