Are you expecting your grandchildren at half term, or maybe during the summer holidays. They should be taking advantage of the open air and getting more exercise now that the days are longer and warmer
A disadvantage of being a grandparent is that all those garden activities have given way to flowers and shrubs. No room to erect metal frames for swings and slides, even if you wanted to. Why buy expensive equipment which will only be used for a few days when you can prepare play equipment that can be changed to different activities by using common objects such a plank of wood or a pole and rope.
We devised numerous activities and got our grandchildren (and children) to help making them. It was instructive for them as well as being a healthy activity.
Slides and seesaws are of course simple things to make but we found we could make a variety of swings and gliders using just a plank and some rope. For the older children an aerial runway proved popular. We happen to have some trees on a slope so that they could traverse the runway without being too high from the ground.
A rope ladder is popular with the boys and so far we have found 4 variations on the simple ladder. When they had enough on these we could string the ladder between two trees and let them traverse over an imaginary river. A garden pond would, of course, be better and add more sense of adventure. They were splendid ways of taking up excess energy and they were noticeably quieter afterwards.
The girls preferred something more sedate such as the seesaw, it seems they quite like chatting while bobbing up and down. The slide did not give them so much opportunity for conversation but it was one of the best pieces for the obstacle course that followed after teatime.
The end of the day was time for them to make suggestions for different ways of using the kit that we had available. It gives them some practical experience in what can be down and how to make sure their knots and lashings are secure. An important feature of the day is that they dismantle everything so that the garden returns to something like its pristine condition before they arrived.
We found some old car tyres that used to protect the boat. They needed cleaning but we are finding several ways to use them for next time our grandchildren come to stay.
