Summer is here. Sunny days in the garden, pinning down your offspring in a bid to slather them in sun-cream and dedicating an entire drawer of the freezer to ice lollies. So now is a great time to remind yourself of the rules for kids playing in the garden.
1 If you see a wasp you must scream like you have just broken your arm so all responsible adults have a minor heart attack. Keep screaming until the wasp has gone. Resume screaming when it comes back again 10 seconds later.
2 Demand to play with water at any opportunity. Paddling pools are the ultimate receptacle for said water, water guns come a very close second. Even a bucket will do. The object with any water is to get as wet as possible.
3 Dig things. You do not have to restrict yourself to your sandpit. Flower beds and gravel paths are perfectly acceptable places to dig.
4 If you are feeling a bit peckish soil is a great from of nourishment and always to hand in the garden.
5 Find an insect and make it your pet by placing it in a plastic tub with a few leaves and calling him ‘Ken’. Woodlouse are preferable. Be absolutely heartbroken when you go outside to play the next day and find that ‘Ken’ has gone. Replace ‘Ken’ with a ladybird called ‘Dotty’.
6 Get naked at any opportunity.*
7 Ask Mummy really important questions like “Why don’t you have a willy” really loudly so your neighbours can hear.
8 Bounce on a trampoline until your shorts fall down. Then use this as an excuse to follow the aforementioned rule number six.
9 Make a perfume for Mummy by mixing grass, water, daisies and a bit of mud. Insist that she wears your beautiful perfume.
10 Refuse to admit that you have outgrown your cosy coupe car and squeeze yourself into it. You will probably require a grown ups help to get back out again.
11 Demand an ice lolly or ice cream every 32 minutes. If your demands are being refused you may request milk shakes and ice.
12 Whinge whine and wiggle whenever a grown up tries to apply sun-cream to you.
13 Refuse to wear a hat.
14 Request bubbles and demand that the grown up lets you have a go. When it’s your turn spill the bubble liquid everywhere and then cry.
15 Get as dirty as possible. Grown ups love getting grass stains out of clothes.
16 When planting seeds it is important to check on their progress at least 15 times a day and question your responsible adult as to why nothing has grown yet.
17 Play houses are very versatile. They can be a house, cafe, garage, shop, police station. Whatever you want. Just be sure that your grown up is on hand to make signs for your chosen purpose and provide as many props as possible.
18 Request all meals be eaten outside.
19 Kick a ball over a fence at least once every day.
20 Present Nana with a bouquet of hand picked flowers from her favourite flower bed. Ensure you remove all of the flowers from all of the plants when doing this**.
* My boys seemed incapable of keeping their clothes on in the garden last Summer. So much so that when we took them swimming at our local leisure centre the three year old had a major tantrum in the changing rooms because he wanted to go in the swimming pool naked!
** True story! Never take your eyes off a toddler in the garden.
Win!
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Loving all your rules for having fun out in the garden
My girls would play out in the garden all the time if I let them, they love it and my youngest literally lives in the sandpit!
How fab, this really took me back to when my kids were younger. I love the summer arriving now and them going out in the garden as they are old enough for me to read a book or get on with other things. It’s win:win. Mich x
Fabulous give away. Garden tool and enormous cat toy / climbing frame. (Our cat so would!)
Popping back over from #coolmumclub my lovely xoxo
Fantastic! So hilariously true! Love “Ken” and “Dotty” my kids all do the same. Great giveaway too.
Even now with mine being 12 and 13 the garden isn’t exactly peaceful unless they’re all at school. They have lost so many tennis balls and random other items in the neighbours hedge that somehow disappear never to be seen again – and the neighbours are actually nice so they are in that hedge somewhere ha. The sunshine is actually here today, so I’m hoping spring is here for more sunny noisy days in the garden 😉
Stevie x
This is so spot on! The water I can handle, but the digging?! All my poor plants look very sad by the end of an afternoon in the garden once my son is through. And with him, it’s not so much a wiggle and a whine about sun cream, so much as scream as if someone is torturing you – I’m so embarrassed about what the neighbours must think!
Why don’t they get that all the fuss makes it take 10 times as long!
Yep, so much of this happens in our house too… Might be me screaming at the wasps though, I was stung a couple of times on my finger last year, and it was such a horrible weird pain! Never been stung before! Love the picture of your little one with Dotty! Very cute! (:
I got stung when I was 17. On my finger. My whole hand and arm swelled to epic proportions and I ended up in A&E! Apparently it was a dirty wasp!
Haha this is brilliant and so true. Last Summer one of my boys kicked the football into a neighbours garden and then shouted “Muuuum I kicked the football into the neighbours garden you said is grumpy, should I go and ask, I can hear them outside”. Nice one kiddo!!!!
Ahhh, yes to all of these! Youngest won’t stop adopting woodlouse at the moment. She has even made a woodlouse town for them all made out of lego. I keep having to rescue them when her back is turned! Fab giveaway too x
I actually bought them a proper bug ‘hotel’ but they still prefer a tupperware pot with some leaves thrown in!
Hahaha ah this is so very true. Kids are hilarious outside!!! What a fab giveaway too!
Yes to all of this! This is basically our life from when the weather gets a little warmer. Fab giveaway Hun x