What we have been doing this spring and summer

Greetings everyone,

Below is part (2) of the rundown of our activities this year: March-June 2008. And then we will be up-to-date! Thanks to Bryony for the lovely photos of Iona planting bulbs and going on a Dick Whittington expedition, and for her suggestion sent by email for a future activity (a nature trail).

SPRING
06.03 World Book Day: a Gruffalo Walk through the woods with adults playing parts and children puppeteering (adults very enthusiastic, children more interested in racing around)
13.03 Bulb planting with our excellent Parks Officer Stephen Whittaker - in the woods this time - English bluebells, snowdrops and anenomes.
20.03 EASTER: decorating boiled eggs (children) and blown-out eggshells (adults) with coloured tape and felt pens, to make an Easter branch for the Park cafe; meanwhile Easter bunny was hiding chocolate eggs around the cafe for the children to find. Rosemary told 'The Ugly Duckling' with pictures of goslings and cygnets.
27.03 Playground brainstorming: met in the small children's playground and drew ideas for playground improvements on a large map - children took over and decorated the map their own way! Then a birthday story about Isobel (aged 4) and cake!
03.04 'Tracks and Trails': made trails using stones, cones, twine etc. then children followed each others' trails. Meanwhile visiting origamist Luke Segaran showing children how to make birds. Story about Granny and Max going on a night walk and leaving themselves a trail of shiny pebbles to find the way back home.
10.04 Making flags and Dick-Whittington-style travelling bundles with sticks and cloth, filling bundles with treasures (eg. pretty leaves, mandarin oranges) and going on an 'adventure' into the laurel bushes to eat them; looking for frogspawn in the wildlife garden (sadly all eaten by magpies!)
17.04 Ladybirds: colouring pictures of them, and dashing out between rain showers to find some real ones. Hanging up birdfeeder balls.
24.04 Pouring rain meant not too much happened this week...
01.05 RHYME TIME RAMBLE with Anneliese Emmans Dean (finally!!) A ramble through the woods with Anneliese's magic rhyme basket - we said an ode to Queen Victoria, 'wriggly wormed into the woods', had rhymes for the earthworms and spiders we found, and ended up at the Story Trees where we each had to make an offering of a very special feather, pinecone or leaf so the Trees would allow us to have a story there! Luckily they did - it was called 'Bim the Bird' and we loved it! See Anneliese's blog and lovely photos of the Rhyme Time Ramble at http://thebigbuzz.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/rhyme-time-ramble/
08.05 Making May Crowns from entwined willow twigs and fresh flowers - luckily the gardeners were removing some late primroses and polyanthus from the flowerbeds, so we helped ourselves to those and looked like kings and queens!
15.05 Making an obstacle course - not a tremendous success but the kids had a good time racing around the Story Trees!
22.05 Making perfume in a basin of water using what we could find: lemon balm, pine needles, blackcurrant leaves, and a bit of grass and soil....each child took some home in a mini-jam jar.
29.05 Painting on large unfolded cardboard boxes, the result used as scenery in the lunchtime performance of 'Compost - the Mini-Musical' by older children on a half-term holiday activity, which many VYFWBP parents and children stayed to watch.

SUMMER 08:
05.06 Making binoculars (using card and sellotape) and going birdwatching, using a picture guide Laura had made of the most common birds. Children enjoyed looking at pondskaters and spiders in the wildlife area too. Went to see the woodpecker nest where the babies were starting to poke their heads out to see how far they would soon need to fly down. We told a surprisingly successful story relay-style all together, about the woodpeckers and their busy parents.
12.06 Making elderflower lemonade, using hot water, lots of elderflowers, sugar and lemons - children enjoyed picking flowers off and squeezing lemons. Waiting a while during storytime, then straining and drinking the juice - most delicious!
19.06 MIDSUMMER PARTY under the pines and birches: decorating candles with coloured wax, then a picnic - with the candles lit for a few minutes, despite the wind!
26.06 Indian Day: made a teepee using long branches which fell during the stormy weather, propped against a tree stump and covered with cloths (pegged and stringed together!) Also headbands with feathers, and an Indian story ('Little Bear and Silver Star') and songs.

Well there we are! We have had a busy few months...

A rundown of our doings, July 07-June 08

Here, in the briefest fashion, is a list of our main activities during our first full year.

SUMMER 07:
26.07 Making musical instruments by filling tins with cones, seeds etc
23.08 Picking BLACKBERRIES! Making blackberry yoghurt, dying wool with blackberry juice to make purple cardboard sheep - yes, indeed!

AUTUMN 07:
06.09 Making collages of fresh green leaves on huge sheets of cardboard; acting out 'The Gruffalo' with puppets
13.09 Going fishing: making rods with sticks, string and pine cone 'bait' (worked); making boats with corks, cocktail sticks and blutack (didn't work!)
20.09 Playing 'greengrocers', selling crabapples, rosehips, damsons, hawthorn berries, beech nuts, conkers etc, and weighing them out carefully!
27.09 Pretending to be squirrels: hiding nuts and hunting for them
4.10 Making a den with sheets, twine and clothes pegs between two trees, playing house inside it, decorating it with garlands of berries etc.
11.10 Painting pinecones and twigs with both artificial paints and our own manufactured ones (crushed rowanberries using pestle and mortar - nice orange colour!)
18.10 Making hidey-holes for hedgehogs - heaps of autumn leaves - and baiting them with lumps of cheese; making hidey-holes for children using cardboard boxes stuffed with leaves
25.10 Half-term party; making heaps of autumn leaves, carving pumpkins
1.11 Bulb planting with Parks Officer under the pine trees; planting holly berries and ash trees in trays to take home
8.11 Making leaf butterflies, using twigs, autumn leaves, coloured blutack, pine needles (as feelers) and stringing them up as mobiles
15.11 Making bird feeders by covering pine cones with peanut butter and sticking on pumpkin seeds, hanging them up on bushes
22.11 Making pictures with evergreen leaves (and discovering that the squirrels got the bird feeders!!!)
29.11 Making binoculars from toilet rolls, string and sellotape, and going birdwatching in the wildlife area and clearing

WINTER 07/08:
6.11 Making Christmas decorations in (and for) the Park cafe: pinecones covered with glitter and strung up on ribbons
13.12 Gathering evergreenery and making Advent Wands and a wreath for the cafe with them
20.12 CHRISTMAS PARTY - decorating delicious homemade gingerbread men in the cafe, then decorating a tree in the woods, and singing Christmas carols for the cafe staff
03.01 Building a snowman!
10.01 Making a garden on a tray using salt playdough, leaves, stones, sticks, grass etc, and adding animals to act out a story
17.01 Splashing in puddles, then making our own 'puddle collages' using wool and crayons on paper
24.01 Tracks and prints: making animal and dinosaur prints in playdough, then looking for real ones in the woods
31.01 Planned 'Rhyme Time Ramble' with poet Anneliese Emmans Dean cancelled because Park closed due to high winds - retreated to Cath's house for a cup of tea!!
07.02 Looking for worms and creepy crawlies in woods, collecting them in a bucket for better inspection, then made 'worms' in the time-honoured fashion using eggboxes
14.02 Joint Valentine's event with Very Young Friends of ROWNTREE Park - a visit to the university campus, feeding ducks, making heart pictures
21.02 Making 'Go-Grow' hand puppets to celebrate the first spring flowers - checking on our bulbs which were coming up nicely
28.02 Making a bird's nest big enough for all the children to sit in, from branches, moss and grass!

Whew! I think I will stop here and continue with spring in another post!!!

Welcome to the Very Young Friends of West Bank Park's BLOG!

The Very Young Friends have been meeting at the same well-loved (and much abused) statue of Queen Victoria, every Thursday morning, for a whole year now. We have trekked off to different parts of West Bank Park's woods and meadows and got up to all sorts of things we wouldn't want our work colleagues to see us doing, like building nests big enough for five kids to sit in, or playing shops using crabapples and alder cones as currency.

It is time we had our own blog. It will be a way of reminding us of the things we do together as parents and children in the Park, both the activities our kids took part in really enthusiastically and those we were much more enthusiastic about ourselves (because both are important!) It might also be interesting to other parent and toddler groups, nursery schools or childminders who want to do more outdoors.

Please, fellow VYFWBPs, feel free to contribute to this blog whenever you like. For the next while I will keep myself busy posting my notes from the past year - up till now I have just written a paragraph about each session in a large, black, very scrappy 2003 diary. It would be great if you (or anyone else with good ideas) wrote in with your suggestions for other activities we could try.

I am looking forward to blogging!