We wove a little magic in the park at Halloween with a giant woolly web among the trees - the perfect place to dangle our fir cone and pipe cleaner spiders! We're looking forward to some fire bowl fun this Thursday so hope to see you there!

Remember, we run every Thursday, rain or shine - so don't let a bit of dampness put you off. If you are new to the group or want to know a bit more about what we do, you might want to watch the rather beautiful video of a typical session on this link:

http://www.yorok.org.uk/Workforce/Involving%20and%20engaging%20children%20and%20young%20people/The%20Story%20Catch%20Project/very-young-friends-of-west-bank-park.htm

Thought I should try to sort out how you do this bloggy lark and respond to Cath's lovely welcome (and farewell) to show everyone that we are a professional bunch of woodland folk and completely at home with technology... 

If I've pressed the right bits on the keyboard and this actually appears, stand by for a glittering array of recent photos and news of all the larks in the park we have been having recently......

New management!

It is with a bit of a tear in my eye that I tell you that it's time for me (Cath) to move on from leading this group!  I have gone and got a job that doesn't permit me to take Thursdays off any more.  But never fear as the group is mightily strong and a whole new team of people is going to help take over.  As for this blog - well, I've never been very reliable at keeping it up-to-date! - so may I introduce our new blogmeister (meistress?) Vicki. 

So you can look forward to lots more news of our doings, photographs of happy muddy children, and maybe - who knows? - the group will be part of the growing online community of those chipping away, ever so subtly, ever so practically, at Mr Gove's vision for toddlers in classrooms being tested on their triangles.  That would be a fine thing. 

For now - I'm over and out - welcome Vicki!

The annual elderflower-fest!

Elderflowers, like everything else, have come very late this year!  But that means we are still enjoying them now.  We had what has become a much-loved annual event this morning: the making of elderflower lemonade.  I have given the 'recipe' (ha!) for this previously, but the idea of it is that the kids get to pick the ingredients, make and drink the stuff within the space of about an hour - no delayed gratification! - which is a wonderful experience for them.  It tastes different every year as no measuring is involved, and this year's rather sour offering went down an absolute treat, with second helpings being clamoured for all round. 

Here are three recipes for elderflower drinks you can make very easily.  The champagne (no. 2) is my personal favourite.  I've just downed a bottle of it (it's non-alcoholic - at least I think so!) while sitting here.

1                    ‘Instant elderflower lemonade’ as we make at the group

Some lemons

Some elderflowers

Some sugar

Some boiling water

Squeeze lemon juice into pot, add flowers (not stalks), sugar and water, mix, come back in an hour, strain and drink!  Sing lots of songs and do various bits of magic over the pot as you go.  Make children feel very honoured at being trusted with very hot water.

2                    Elderflower champagne (non-alcoholic fizz – really like magic! Uses the natural yeasts found on the elderflowers)

Makes about 6 litres

36 elderflower heads

1 lemon

680g caster sugar

3tbsp white-wine or cider vinegar

4.5 litres water

Remove stalks and put flowers in clean bucket/large pan, along with lemon juice and rind (no pith!), sugar and vinegar.  Add cold water, stir to dissolve sugar, and leave for at least 24 hours. Strain through muslin or jelly bag into sterilised bottles with screw caps, corks or flip-over lemonade tops.  Leave for TWO WEEKS.  Check occasionally that they aren’t getting too fizzy – if so you’ll need to open the tops to let the excess gas off or else they might explode!

3                    Elderflower cordial (keeps for a year or more, dilute to taste)

Per litre cordial use:

12 elderflower heads

1 lemon

1 pt water

1.5lb sugar

Water, sugar and rind (no pith!) together in pan, heat till sugar dissolved.  Remove stalks and stir flowers into this syrup.  Cool completely.  Add lemon juice.  Strain through muslin or jelly bag and put in sterilised bottles.

NB. To sterilise bottles you don’t need special tablets, just fill them with boiling water and leave for a while. 

NB2. For all recipes, try and get fresh, whitey-yellow elderflower heads, not the slightly ‘off’ looking (and smelling) brownish ones.

Fire, earth, water and...weather!

Well the blog's been quiet but we haven't.  All winter long (and it was another long and cold one) we have continued to meet every week and it never ceases to amaze me how many families turn up even in the grimmest weather.  And of course it's rarely as grim as you think it's going to be when you look out the window before setting out.  I think we've only been actually rained on once or twice all year so far.

One of the reasons I have become a lot less faithful with the blog is that we have been going for SIX YEARS now and many of our activities repeat, in a rather nice way, from one year to the next.  Every June we see the elderflowers coming and get ready to make elderflower lemonade - every winter we spend a couple of sessions racing around gathering 'nest' materials to keep warm - every April we gather cherry blossom to make potions...

But the children grow and change, their parents too, new ones come along, and our routine changes to suit them.  This gang at the moment, for example, just love climbing up and down the roots of the story trees.  So we tend to go there almost every week, and whatever other activity we're ostensibly doing, a lot of the old climbing goes on.  They also love stories.  A regular cast of puppet characters has evolved, led by the ever-faithful Mummy Mouse, and the story is very rarely missed out.  The children who come at present are mostly aged 1 or 2, so as they grow up towards the lofty age of 3, we may take on a bigger range of activities.

The park is changing too.  There's less funding about to look after it, so the wildlife area is looking pretty rough and the pond was in danger of becoming a swamp last autumn.  We participated in a reed-removing morning - seven or eight of us getting knee-deep in pond water to clear it out.  And thank goodness we did, as it's been a bumper frog year and we have paid the growing tadpoles many visits.  It'll need doing again this autumn, and maybe we'll need to get more involved in litter-picking, planting and so on, to keep it the beautiful place we love. 

We carry on doing very simple activities that get the children involved with the elements.  Lots of water (doing the 'laundry' in the woods, making 'perfumes' and 'soups'), earth (digging for creepy-crawlies, running down slopes and getting mouthfuls of the stuff).  And now also FIRE!  Yes, after many years of shying away from actually making real fires in the woods, we have acquired a FIRE BOWL - a wonderful thing that lets us have a very confined small fire, with no risk of burning down the woods!  We've made popcorn and hot drinks and I am already looking forward to elderflower pancakes!

Let us share our 'fire song' with you - subtly constructed to persuade the children to sit back and not come too close to the fire bowl.  Sing to the tune of 'Miss Polly had a Dolly':

We're making a fire and it's hot, hot, hot,
The sparks will dance around a lot, lot, lot,
So we'll sit back together in a ring, ring, ring,
And watch all the flames dance and sing, sing, sing.