A heavenly Halloween (if there is such a thing!) this week with Lucy turning the Young Friends into Autumn Kings and Queens with leafy crowns and some lovely stories and songs. Next week get ready for some firework fun with sparkles everywhere and some crafty fire building....probably made out of orange and red tissue paper as none of us are brave enough to tackle the fire bowl just yet....!

A reminder that the simplest ideas are usually the best! No instructions needed, the children knew exactly what to do with a bucket of mud, some cake cases and a park full of interesting berries and leaves at our Mud Cafe!

Some news. As many of you know, the Young Friends have also become the Old Friends of West Bank Park. We have a web site: http://www.westbankpark.org/ and facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/westbankparkyork and if you would like to send in park pictures or some comments etc please do as they need filling up a bit!

As well as technological enhancements, we are starting to tackle the most needy areas of the park. At the moment, I am busy trying to save the beloved Truck in the playground. This was scheduled for demolition but the council have agreed to replace the side panel (where most of the damage was) instead. Will keep you updated. Once its fixed, we plan a bumper painting day to tart up as much of the equipment as we can. Let me know if you would like to get involved!

On the work front, we are drawing up a monthly "Learn in the Park" schedule. We'll kick this off with a pond clearance session on THURS OCT 23. This will make up the crafts activity section of our Young Friends session, in other words, everything will be the same with snack time, songs etc, but we'll de camp to the pond area (And a couple of kind mums will entertain the children in the playground) to join other volunteers to brush up the pond area. Catherine Heinemeyer will lead this and she is a bit of an expert so listen out for fascinating facts! Meet at the statue as normal, and if you are late, we will be by the pond! PLEASE WEAR SUITABLE CLOTHES!!!

We had a lovely summery party on Aug 7th with everything a very Young Friend could want really - crafts with Jen and Tanya (including an actual ice cream shop for making glitter ice lollies!), a groaning treats table provided by all of us, play tents, zooming scooters and fabulous games from Alex of Parties of Distinction (http://www.partiesofdistinction.co.uk/)!!, a little story from me and glorious sunshine. Just lovely.

And some interesting news about the park that just shows the power of Mums...as many of you know, the lovely Friends of West Bank Park, the (slightly older) version of us except that they look after the whole park, all stepped down a couple of weeks ago. After 20 yrs of keeping a watchful eye on everything from the gardening and maintenance down to the thorny issue of the Gates and toilets, they felt that they needed new blood.

Would you like to have a little guess who is on the new committee! Our own Lucy King is the new Secretary (take a letter Miss King), Helen Hoult who took over the West Bank Park Fair this year, is the new Chair, Big Young Friend Catherine Heinemeyer is also on the committee and I am the new Treasurer. Helen has already set up a Web site and we are poised and raring to go. I plan to focus mainly on work groups to try and keep on top of litter/bindweed/pond clearing etc so if anyone fancies tarting up the park, please let me know. Well done us I say!

At last a sunny Thursday and we had a beautiful morning chalking happy pictures along the paths and an extra special song session with the addition of a guitar! Thanks so much to Kate for organising and she is running this weeks fun and frolics so hope to see you there!

P.S Don't forget our Big Bash on Aug 7. We have a summer party every year and it should be lots of fun. There are no contributions required as its the Young Friends way of thanking everyone for their support, so you can spend your £1 on cake instead! Also, I just want to point out that although its Albie's birthday on this day, its simply a coincidence as I am running the session that day. Its not his party so please don't worry about cards or presents. Just bring yourselves. And the cake of course....!

A LOT OF FUN AT THE FAIR! 

So more than 2000 people came to the West Bank Park Summer Fair today.....twice as many as last year. They must have heard about the Young Friends fabulous craft tent (see picture) where Jen, Ruby, Penny, Hanzza and Tanya turned hundreds of children into pirates and fairies with their magic wands...and quite a lot of paper and glue...transformed a dull old beech into The Tree of Local Life and made a bit of bunting too. Over in our Story Tent, I chucked glitter about and warmed up the audience for the real stars:  Nettlefoot Kate (Catherine H!), the lovely Lara and fabulous Phil and his slightly naughty puppets.

We are prepared to admit the Bouncy Castle, Mini railway, Morris Dancers, climbing wall, ice creams and community stalls - oh and the face painting, thanks Carolyn! - had something to do with the record number of visitors too, but the best thing about it is that everyone got to experience our beautiful park at its best, all have an e mail to get in touch if they want to support us, and we made rather a lot of money to put towards the park and next year's bash.

Thank you so much to everyone who came to help, join in or simply anyone who comes to our Young Friends group as your £1 s paid for the crafts and story tent and by turning up each week,  we can keep going, rain and shine, helping our beautiful babies grow up to realise how much fun it can be to make soup out of twigs and sit in a tree and sing.

Huge thanks to Marilyn, Roisheen and Mavis from the Acomb Flower Guild who came armed with bouquets and helped everyone make lovely little cupcake arrangements under the Story Tree. We made a small donation from our funds to their charity, the RNIB and they have promised to return - thank you so much ladies. It was a magical event.

Don't forget the Big Day is coming up - please get in touch if you would like to volunteer to help in the Young Friends Craft Tent on June 29!

ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR! Please come along and support the fair which is all about promoting and protecting our wonderful park! Ruby and Jen are running our marathon Young Friends of West Bank Park Children's Craft Tent with pirate and fairy outfits, the Big Bunting Challenge and Tree of Local Life activities and Catherine Heinemeyer, Lara McLure and my good self will be telling tales in the Story Tent - with a guest appearance from Phil the Puppet Man (Cosmo's Dad).
If you would like to volunteer to help on the day, please contact me straight away! xxx

http://festival.yorkshire.com/events/west-bank-park-summer-fair

All our ladybirds and lacewings have new summer quarters thanks to Lucy King's lovely Bug House making session this week. For those who missed it, the recipe:

Cut the middle from a plastic bottle. Fill it with interesting sticks. Tie with twine and make a loop to hang it up. Fling it around the woods a few times and get your mummy to put it all back together. Take home and enjoy.

Thanks Lucy!

P.S If you can help out at the Summer Fair please get in touch with me a s a p. This is all about promoting West Bank Park and getting people interested in its future, so you will be helping the park as well as us!

Not even gale force winds can deter a seasoned Young Friend of West Bank Park and we were out in good numbers the day after the "Big Storm" in February. Slightly different reactions to the sight of two fallen pines at our meeting spot by Queen Victoria:

 "Oh dear, that's really sad," said the adults.

"Foxes and buried treasure!" cried the children before diving under the roots to investigate.

Our parent rota is working well with different faces bringing new ideas and fun to our sessions. Thanks to Tassy and Lucy and especially professional artist Tanya for opening up Holgate church hall doors to reveal everything you could ever need for a special paint and craft session  - right down to brand new shiny pinnies!

Also thanks to Hayley who has continued to support the Young Friends long after leaving the group, by running the admin and finances. I'll be standing in for this from now on so if you have any questions, want to volunteer to run a session (note how I've put that in bold!), or would like to join in the fun, please contact me at sneekton@hotmail.com.  Bye for now, Vicki

Feeling fruity in the forest....

We had a citrus sensation in the park this week with crates of oranges and the tale of the Belfast dock boy who found that stealing fruit can be rather un a peeling if you are caught. (You'll get the joke if you came along!). After hunting down their oranges in the Story Tree, the children stabbed them with cloves and tied ribbons round them to make traditional pomanders and after an admirable attempt at remembering the words to "Oranges and Lemons", we all sat down for story time with Lara Mclure, Huge thanks to her for such a wonderful treat and to everyone for whom murky skies and spitting rain are no barrier to coming along for wild woodland fun!

Our Christmas Park celebrations were a mixed bag of joy and sadness. The children had a wonderful time tying Christmas wreaths and following a trail of hand made decorations leading to an actual Christmas tree that Tanya had set up in the woods as a special surprise. They loved diving into cakes and crafts at our Park party in Holgate Methodist Church Hall - but we also had to say a proper goodbye to lovely Catherine.
There were quite a few tears - especially when Tanya revealed her exquisite present for Catherine: a montage of photos and images from many golden days of story telling under the trees.

But we move on. So far, despite gloomy skies and spatters of rain we have had bumper numbers at our Thursday group and lots of lovely new faces. With special guests and events a plenty and our rota of parent helpers now booked until July, I think we're going to do ok. Miss you though Cath. xxxx