While Pippa was snoozing, Finn and I went to play in the garden. Finn started off wanting to make a den so we gathered some sticks and traipsed into the paddock. The “den” quickly became a fire and Finn collected the wood and sticks and sent me off to find “tasty things” to cook.
A lot of the wood for the fire came from a pile of leftover scrap wood we had collected for a big bonfire for a summer party. It had been left out all Autumn and Winter and so was sopping wet but pliable so Finn could rip it up to make good sized fire sticks.
I collected up some catkins from the nearby hazel hedge, some pine cones, some seedy looking cuttings and some leaves to put in the cooking pot.
Once the fire was built we put the pot on. It wasn’t very stable and we nearly lost out “dinner”, but a bit of fiddling about and we could give it a good stir with a stirring stick without it falling off.
A tasty dinner was made. This brought us nicely up to “T.V. Time” which gave me time to whip up a real dinner. The whole thing took about an hour with no preparation at all. This sort of activity always reminds me that sometimes just letting your child lead the play is enough. It wasn’t the most glitzy bit of play, but Finn was very reluctant to come inside and only relented when I promised we would do the same tomorrow.
