May events

We have had a sometimes wet but fun month of Thursday mornings in the Park.

7th May: MAYDAY! We decked out a small tree with colourful ribbons as a Maypole, gathered armfuls of willow twigs to make crowns, and decorated them with all kinds of beautiful spring flowers. The children looked - as ever - very fetching in their crowns, and I got out my rusty tin whistle to play some jigs for them to dance round the Maypole to. It felt like we had really seen the summer in.

14th May: ARTIST DAY! Mary Passeri and Colin Widdup came to our group, as part of the ideas-gathering stage of the community mapping project. Mary had an ingenious idea,which is a bit hard to describe: first she strung a little net between two bamboo canes stuck in the ground, a bit like a mini tennis net. We gathered 'the biggest leaves in the wood' and lots of small ones and flowers too. Then, using clothes pegs, pipe cleaners, wire and leaves, we made all sorts of little creatures - butterflies, action heroes, princesses. We entangled these in the netting until it was completely covered, a bit like a mosaic really. Extra leaves in the top for battlements and feathers here and there for featheriness. It was a gorgeous thing and I hope someone has a picture of it. Mary rounded the event off with the wonderful story of 'Snotty Lottie' which I am still getting told by my kids.

21st May: WORM COMPOST DAY! Bryony and I were quite taken with the idea of having our very own Very Young Friends wormery. So she bought a clear plastic jug with a lid at St Leonard's Hospice, and made holes in the bottom. We filled it alternately with wet newspaper, sand, leaf mould and - the magic ingredient - we needed worms. Well if there is one thing we know how to do well....the kids found 30, no 40, no 50 worms with their little trowels and threw 'em in. To give them something tasty to eat we ate apples and gave them the cores. Bryony took it home for its first week, and we will all get our turns to look after the wormery. As the jug is clear, we should be able to see the worms mixing the layers and turning them into compost.

Easter Time

I'm behind schedule with this post!, but thought I would add what we got up to at Easter time. On Thursday 9th April Laura arranged an Easter Egg Hunt through the woods. The children hunted for boiled eggs in the undergrowth, then took their collection to the meadow where they decorated the eggs and made nests to put them in. Laura told a great story 'The Easter Chick' about a chick wanting to be born on Easter Sunday. We finished off with songs and a little bit of chocolate!

Thursday 16th April
In an effort to get the sun shining we decided to have sunny activities today. We started by collecting interesting leaves and feathers to make suncatchers, these were stuck down together with tissue paper and glitter to make beautiful works of art! Then we moved on to planting sunflower seeds, which is easier said than done with ten children wanting to tip out the compost and find the seed again! Hopefully we all had a sunflower seed in a pot to take home and have a sunflower making an appearance! posted by Bryony

Take a bowl of water...

Since we have been given the keys to the park store, it is much easier for us to get water whenever we want - a vital ingredient of a satisfying morning's business n the woods. A couple of weeks ago we set up washing lines between trees and spent a happy hour doing laundry. I ripped up some old blouses into small rags, sawed a block of soap into small pieces and the kids really worked very hard to get them 'clean' (well, wet and covered in soil really, but it is the thought that counts!) Pegging up is a whole other challenge. Small toddlers get on better with 'peg dolly' type pegs, older ones can manage the sprung type. Anyway - lots of fun. And the children are getting very good at a German song about washerwoman:

Sie waschen, sie waschen, sie waschen den ganzen Tag (they wash all day long)
Sie wringen,...... (they wring out)
Sie haengen.... (they hang up)
Sie tanzen..... (they dance)
Sie schlafen..... (they sleep)

This past Thursday, it was water again, this time to see if cherry blossom makes good perfume. It doesn't, really, not if you're looking for something to wear with a cocktail dress, but it is very absorbing and fun to stir!