From mosaics to windmills

Another very lively few weeks for our group. We've had:

* a trip to Holgate Windmill with the wonderful Jen Hay. She gave us all a try at grinding corn with a pair of stones, then with a quern (that was a real technological innovation, let me tell you!), and then we looked at how the windmill works. She told us the story of 'The Mill That George Built', complete with some impressive props, and the children coloured in some pictures of the windmill in bright colours. We sponsored one panel of the new sails, and have a smart certificate to say so! (unfortunately we also caused a minor breakage - the perils of toddlers!)

* leaf printing - thanks Nikki Humberstone and Janey Stockdale for organising this. The children really enjoyed making lovely, overlapping artworks in different colours of paints, using different kinds of leaves. Activities like this can get them in quite a dreamy state, which is to be treasured.

* bird feeder making, using pine cones, sticky 'orrible lard and seeds. There were not many children this week, but sometimes that can make for an unexpectedly fun morning, as happened on this occasion. They led us a merry dance round the woods, jumping up and down slopes covered in fallen leaves.

* More Magical Mosaics! - the splendid Mary Passeri came back for a final fling with us, and we made secret hidden mosaics in the woods. The children's enthusiasm and attention span for this was really wonderful to see. It being half term, we had some robust 4, 5 and 6-year-olds to help out. They especially enjoyed hammering old tiles to smithereens through an old blanket - as pictured. We made one final one all together in a top-secret very-well-hidden place. Mary - we will miss you!




* Planting in the wildlife area. The council has given the Friends of West Bank Park a generous budget to plant some nice-smelling, insect-attracting herbs in this area. We took part in the selection of plants, and today we got planting, with a little help from our Parks Officer Stephen Whittaker, and Margaret Weeden from the Friends. Thanks to both, as we really did enjoy this and it means a lot to the children to have contributed to making the park an even better place. They will all come back and point out which sage plants they planted, and where their snowdrops are hiding in the soil, waiting to come out after Christmas!

'Fall'-ing into bad habits...

Yes, eagle-eyed readers will observe that this is the first blog post in 7 weeks - a lot to update on! The excuse, as usual, is that we have been extremely busy in the Very Young Friends, and especially with finishing our community art project along with the Council, Pine Trees day care centre and the 'grown-up' Friends of the Park. I hope to include a picture of the finished mosaic itself, as soon as it is actually mounted in the park!

What else has the group been up to?
* A musical instrument day - making shakers using old containers and woodland treasures such as beech nuts and pine cones to fill them. Thanks Nikki for leading this session.
* A Berry Day - first we had a good look at all the different kinds of berries growing in the Park and what they are good for - from snowberries which really go 'splat' when you stamp on them, to blackberries which are delicious, to rowan berries which are magical and good for making trails, to hawthorn berries which are great for the birds but very prickly, to elderberries which make good jam, to guelder rose berries which taste disgusting, to yew berries which really ARE poisonous (all you can do with them is throw them away into the hedge very quickly). We made our own 'berries' using potatoes and colourful fleece, hid them and laid trails to them with the rowan berries.
* A Yoga Day! Laura Potts, experienced yoga teacher, led us in some Story Yoga, using positions like 'the camel', 'the tree', 'the dog', and 'the dog having a wee'. What more can I say?! We all greatly enjoyed this, appreciated the good stretch, and most of the kids even joined in!
* A Three Little Pigs Day, led by Laura Barrett, in which houses were built of straw and sticks and got blown in!
* An Apple Day - we gathered windfall apples, washed them and sliced them and hung them up to dry. A little bit challenging for our smallest members, but it's good fun to go foraging.

I am definitely missing a few here but that's enough for now!

Summer shenanigans

What have we been up to during the summer holidays? What HAVEN'T we been up to? The weather has not always been on our side, but it doesn't usually seem to matter. For me the highlight has to be today's blackberry picking and blackberry-pancake-feast, then seeing so many of the children enthusiastically participating in the story of the 'Flippy Floppy Pancake' by tearing around the clearing chasing an imaginary pancake.

But we have also made some surprisingly appealing rose petal perfume (and dabbed it behind our ears), gone digging for creepy-crawlies, begun a whole saga of stories about the hedgehog Mr Snuffles and his friends, and made soup for the fairies. On this occasion a few of the children even SAW some fairies coming out of a hole in a tree, but no adults were watching at the time.

Unfortunately my children and I missed the two late-July sessions - making extremely messy and colourful sand pictures one week, and building houses from straw, sticks and bricks (a la 3 Little Pigs) the next, I believe. Hopefully Lauras M and B can give fuller details on these in a future blog entry.

In addition to our usual Thursday meetings, the annual Play Day for children of all ages was enjoyable and well-attended. As well as helping Mary Passeri gather people's impressions of the park on clay 'maps' for the art project, we sent pairs of adults and children off on the game of 'Blind Man's Tree'. This is always a winner, no matter how cynical the adult or hyperactive the child. It goes as follows:

- the adult is blindfolded and the child leads them, by a circuitous route, to a tree of their choice in the park, trying not to let them get injured on the way!
- The adult gets to know the tree without removing their blindfold - by feeling its bark and girth, maybe taking a rubbing of it, smelling it, feeling its leaves or flowers
- The child leads the adult back to the starting point and removes the blindfold.
- The adult must then find 'their' tree. They always manage it!

Midsummer frolics

This being around the second anniversary of the Very Young Friends, we are starting to establish some traditions. So this midsummer, like last year, we went to a little grove of trees beside the grassy area of the park, which looks a bit like a campsite and has lots of hidey holes and logs to climb around. The children gathered sticks and pinecones for a midsummer 'fire', and built it up very nicely. A ring of pine cones around the outside to contain it. We positioned tea lights in it and lit them, then each child 'jumped' the fire with a bit of help: "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped over the candlestick" (acknowledgements to Dot Male for that idea!).

The sticks then served a different purpose, got tied together with colourful wool, flowers and other bits and bobs to make fairy webs, traps and suchlike.

We had a lovely singing session this week too. There is a very monotonous but sweet song: Zum-a-zum-a-zee, buzzy buzzy bee, Buzzing through the flowers, In the daylight hours, Zum-a-zum-a-zee..." which goes on forever and ever. All the children - even the usually shy ones - took pine cones to act as bees, and buzzed them around from flower to flower all around the little grove of trees. We sang about 10 rounds of that song and then thought it was safe to stop, when they shouted: "Keep singing!" And we had to keep going for what seemed like ages. They were in their own little world, being bees.

Working hard

Sometimes it's good to take advantage of things that are happening in the Park anyway. We heard that the Conservation Volunteers would be here this Thursday clearing and resurfacing part of the wildlife area. There is nothing little children love like watching those kind of jobs. So we went to spy on them, all 20 of them with their spades and rakes and hammers and wheelbarrows and (best of all) chainsaws. And when we'd had enough of that we went to do some chalking on the paths nearby.

It was lovely, apart from anything, to see the park so full of people - as well as us and the volunteers, there were a couple of school classes on a trip, lots of parents in the playground, council staff at work and so on.

Last week, we were also hard at work building a den in the woods. To be strictly truthful, the mums were more enthusiastic about the task than the children. But that is OK! They helped us drag big sticks over, and gave their criticisms, and pointed out when things were falling down. And, as usual, they ran away off over the root stumps and mounds by themselves.

ELDERFLOWERS

This year, like last, we set to making elderflower lemonade at the bench in front of the rockery, opposite which are some conveniently situated elder bushes. The smell is so tempting and the children's hunter-gatherer instincts come to the fore. You literally can't stop them looking for more to 'put in the basin'.

It is a good task for little children because there are several interesting stages which need lots of concentration and cooperation, and awaken all their senses:
- picking the flowerheads (about 30)
- removing the flowers from their stems
- squeeeeeeeeezing the lemons (about 4)
- adding some sugar (about 6-10 teaspoons)
- stirring in the hot water (about 2 litres)
- tapping on the pot lid to 'make the taste come out of the flowers' (not strictly necessary that one)
- having a story while waiting for it to cool down (thanks Laura for Hamda's surprise which everybody loved)
- lading the juice through a funnel into a jug
- drinking it!

This is a very approximate recipe which takes about an hour from picking to drinking. You can also make cordial (which will last a year or more) and champagne (2 weeks to turn alcoholic and drink it quick before it explodes) - look online for recipes.

The butterflies and the bees

Clare is clearly a dab hand with a hacksaw. She brought in lengths of drainpipe just right for solitary bee residences, and plenty of straws and canes to stuff them with. The children set to this task with glee. She also had them making butterfly feeders, using pieces of cotton wool dipped in sugar water to tempt them. We made a few spare to hang around the clearing in the park -let's see if they get colonised.

The worms in our plastic-jug wormery appear to be doing OK in their new home, although it is difficult to tell with worms (as Winnie the Pooh might have said). Bryony brought it in for inspection, and none of them tried to escape back to their old woodland home. The children were curious to see them. If, as planned, we do some planting this autumn in the wildlife area, it will be good to use the wormery's compost as a contribution to the bed.