Earlier in the year some coffee playdough lead to an interest in mixing with smells, so we used basil, ginger, rosemary, lemon, thyme and cinnamon to incorporate into our mixtures.

‘I smell ginger, let’s make ginger bread men’

This interest in mixing and ingredients lead to the creation of gingerbread people, we used the gingerbread cutters on the projector which brought them to life and provided the opportunity for the children to climb into the ginger bread projections.

‘When i was little i used to be a gingerbread man’

‘I didn’t eat mine when i got home it just ran as fast as it could out my door and a bear ate it’

Some children were expressing an interest in pirates at this point and whilst playing around on the light projector with the ginger bread cutters a piece of foam piping became a pirate hat for the gingerbread man.

‘He’s a pirate! A gingerbread pirate’

We placed a vote to decide if we should use our large cardboard box for a Pirate ship or a Gingerbread house, the majority chose pirate ship and so piece by piece they created their own ship, flag, wheel and parrot.

We used scales to measure the weights of treasure, created maps, used compasses, flags, telescopes and one child decided our ship needed a parrot. During forest school the children followed clues left by a pirate who had stolen some of our nursery toys and buried them in the woods, and they even used literacy skills to write back to the pirate.

This pirate interest developed as the children turned to makers, explorers and adventures, they had the chance to build their confidence whilst engaging in role play, sailing to far away islands to reclaim treasure and being completely in control of their own learning.