Tag: autumn

Children, Families, Family Life, Learning, Memories, Outdoor Play, Parents, School

Celebrating The Small Things:Week Forty Two

by thejoyoffiveLeave a Comment on Celebrating The Small Things:Week Forty Two

This weeks ‘celebrating the small things’ I am talking about new neighbours, Oscar and his alphabet and autumn leaves.

New Neighbours – Over the years it has been sad to see how much the whole community togetherness has diminished. Busy lives and people being so preoccupied with there own things has lead to families keeping themselves to themselves and neighbours can all to often be complete strangers.

Since moving I have been lucky enough to meet some wonderful, friendly and warm neighbours who even bought cake to welcome us the other day. It’s these little things that mean so much and have cemented the happiness we have felt about our move even more.

Oscar’s Alphabet – Oscar has always had a thirst for knowledge and since starting school this has been feed every day and it’s been an absolute you to listen to him recite his muddled version of the alphabet and get excited about his phonics rhymes.

I was so sad to see him start school but I’m certainly loving to watch him grow.

Autumn Leaves – I’m often asked what my favourite season is and to be honest I really don’t know. I love different things about each one and love that we get such stark differences in the UK, but one of my favourite things about this time of year is definitely the changing colours of the trees.

They may be an absolute pain in the backside to clean up but they are so beautiful while they last.

Cafes, Cakes, Children, Families, Family Life, Farms, Food, Garden Centres, Kids Days Out, Large Families, Memories, Nutfield, Outdoor Play, Parks, Photography, Priory Farm, Reigate, Surrey

Saying Hello To Autumn At Priory Farm

by thejoyoffive10 Comments on Saying Hello To Autumn At Priory Farm

A chill in the wind, beautiful rich colours, Halloween and cosy afternoons snuggled up under warm blankets are just a few of the reason I absolutely love October.

The weather hasn’t yet changed to the bitterness of winter and getting out into the great outdoors is a real pleasure.

The first adventure for us is always a trip to Priory Farm to select the perfect pumpkin for carving and eating if I ever get round to trying pumpkin pie…I have been promising the children this for the past goodness knows how long!

I have written about Priory Farm countless times as it has so much to offer from fantastic play areas to a brilliant discovery walk and they always go that extra mile for special occasions such as this.

Today we climbed aboard the truck that was decked out perfectly for Halloween with missing limbs, cobwebs and huge spiders.

The short journey lead us straight to the pumpkin field which the children couldn’t wait to get to and select their favourite pumpkin, which for the first year ever wasn’t a competition to see who’s was the biggest.

A good few laps of the field and more than a few pumpkins picked and rejected we finally had our favourites and headed back to the kiosk where there was a game of ‘roll the pumpkin’ and hoopla onto creepy arms to keep the children amused while we waited for our ride back.

Prized pumpkins in hand we climbed aboard and headed off to get a well earned piece of scrummy cake and a good coffee.

There is so much going on over the next few weeks at Priory Farm as well as the pumpkin picking and a visit come highly recommend from us!

Country Kids

Arts And Crafts, Children, Families, Family Life

Making Conker Snails

by thejoyoffive4 Comments on Making Conker Snails

Currently I have conkers in pots, conkers in pockets in fact I have conkers anywhere imaginable!

I get as excited as the kids when I spot the first lot hitting the ground and we gather them up by the bucket load.

Unfortunately playing conkers at school has been banned for many years now and I just get stuck with he little beauties gathering dust.

Last year we did some autumnal painting with them which was great fun but I wanted to try something a little different this year.

We’ve have put wiggley eyes on them to create little people which was fun, but my favourite has been these conker snails. 


All I did was to get the kids to take small amounts of plasticine and roll into a long sausage shape, place the conker near to the end of the sausage leaving a little for the tail(not sure that is the correct term). Then finally create the tentacles by splitting and moulding into shape at the top.


The children had great fun rolling out the plasticine and just needed a little help with the tentacles.


I still have hundreds left so really need some more ideas if anyone has any!

Children, Families, Family Life, Farms, Garden Centres, Kids Days Out, Outdoor Play, Photography, Surrey

We Made It To The Pumpkin Fields

by thejoyoffive1 Comment on We Made It To The Pumpkin Fields

By the end of this week you will all be fed up with my feed as this is one of my favourite times of the year and I try to cram as many Halloween related trips into the half term as I can!

If you have read my previous post on Priory Farm you will know that I had got the wrong day for picking so on Sunday we headed to Garsons Farm in Esher to pick out our favourite pumpkins.

  

After several split and misshapen pumpkins were selected by the kids and then rejected by me we got one that was just perfect.

   

  

  

 

It’s so much fun to be able to show the children how they are grown and cost no one than buying one from your local supermarket.

   

 

We popped over to the other field and got ourselves some juicy sweetcorn which is something that none of us had ever picked before.

   
 

As well as the pumpkins and corn Garsons has a huge selection of other things to pick from apples to marrows and even strawberries!

Once you are done with your picking you can take a look around the huge garden centre and coffee shop or pick yourself up some scrummy food in the well stocked farm shop.  The cheese straws from the bakery section come highly recommended from us.

This week if you chose to visit you might be able to spot the Pumpkin Fairy flying around whist your there!
  

Cafes, Children, Families, Family Life, Farms, Garden Centres, Holidays, Kids Days Out, Memories, Outdoor Play, Parents, Photography, Sons, Surrey

Haunted Halloween At Priory Farm

by thejoyoffive9 Comments on Haunted Halloween At Priory Farm

  

Today didn’t go quite as planned.  We set off today to have a tractor ride to pick our own pumpkins at Priory Farm but due to my poor organisation skills we were a week late!!

This was not a problem as there was so much to keep us occupied we soon forgot about it.

One of the best features that Priory Farm has to offer is the discovery walk that has a spooky twist in it at this time of year.  The children can collect their quiz sheet at the kiosk and work their way round the walk answering questions and exploring everything it has to offer.

   
   

Their are pumpkins hanging in trees to count, broomsticks hiding in the orchard and spiders lurking in the woods that all need hunting out.

   
     

As well as the spooky quiz there are tunnels to explore and plenty of hungry fish to feed.

   
   

As our trip was originally to collect our pumpkins a trip to the Witches Cave was a must.  There was a creepy tunnel to walk through and hundreds of different pumpkins to choose from.

   
         

We rounded off our day with a trip to the coffee shop where we had the most wonderful homemade cake whilst the kids got on with some Halloween themed colouring.

  

All the Halloween fun will be going on over the half term and I highly recommend a visit with your little devils.

Arts And Crafts, Children, Crafts, Families, Family Life, Learning, Memories, Outdoor Play, Parks

Making Autumn Colourful

by thejoyoffive14 Comments on Making Autumn Colourful

We may be having some fantastic weather for this time of year but Autumn is in full swing and the parks are littered with all sorts of natural materials that are perfect to take home and use to make some masterpieces with your little ones.

   
   

After spending a good while at the park tonight foraging around and making the most of the sunshine we went home and got together a selection of twigs, leaves, pine cones, acorns and conkers and took a large sheet of paper which we used to create a colourful Autumn pattern.

   
     

Next up we picked the roundest conkers we could find, painted them in different colours then placed a sheet of paper inside a baking tray and rolled them around and around to create a really pretty pattern.

   
   

Being late in the day I couldn’t stand the mess of number five joining in with the painting so a made a tray up for him containing all the items we collected plus some play dough which he happily sat poking and pushing around while the others got on with painting.

  

This is a great activity to get the children interested in their surroundings and using art to explore different colours and textures.