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!!!