Junk Modelling and Butterfly Watching 1/08/11

Hello Community Edders!

Here is an update about next week's Community Education Session...   

We are happy to be welcoming Helen Smith fom Transition Town Whitstable's, Nurture Group on Monday 1st August, 9.30am - 11.30am to do some junk modelling and butterfly watching.

Do come and join the fun!

For more information about Transition Town Whitstable here's a link to Transition Town Whitstable Blog: 

Transition Town Whitstable Blog

And one direct to the Nurture Group page:

Nurture Group

Making Paints, Painting Pics, Digging Clay, Making Pots and Memory Game

It was a lovely surprise for our family today (Monday 25th July) as I had thought that we wouldn't be able make the home-ed session but I managed to drag Lu's grand-parents and dad along to join in and see what our get togethers are all about.  Today Rebecca taught the children to make paint out of Nasturtium flowers, Grass, Blackberries and Clay...  I didn't see the exact procedure (water I assume and squishing) as I was late but the colours came out very bright in the paintings! 

Then they dug up some more Clay from the allotment and made little bowls as well as a Dinosaur between them, which I didn't take a photo of for some reason!  Oops, but here as some of the pots, lovely.

Here is the box of lovely objects and toys for playing the memory game with.

And best of all Lu's Granny and Grandad and Dad enjoyed it too!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Sea salt!

Just following up to say we boiled our sea water a bit...it looked a bit gross so the next day I went to pour the water away and thought I could see mouldy bits...then I noticed they were very white, cube shaped mouldy bits!



Salt!!! Did anyone else have any luck?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

On the beach

I think becca will do a more thorough post but just wanted to share a few photos we took at this Monday's meet at the beach. The weather might not have been ideal by most peoples standards, but there's no denying the beauty and drama of the view




Pretty dark for 10am!
Collecting shells for land art...



A butterfly braves the windy beach...



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Fairy Garden, Marbling Mayhem, Colour Bingo... Land Art

I was late for last Monday's session and missed making the 'Fairy Garden' but Rebecca gave us the bits to take home and participate, here's a pic of one of the others to give you an idea..  the children filled seed trays with soil and clover and watercress seeds and added sparkly stars and sticks and other found objects and now all we have to do is wait for the garden to grow....

Then out came all the stuff for the very messy, fun and facinating 'Marbling' activity...  It was more of an experiment and we will all look forward to doing it again - Not one of the children wandered off!

Water into the tray

Oil into the bottle and pipette

food colouring into the bottle and pipette

watching the oil and colour float

Add a bit more colour 

Mix it with a fork

Add a bit more colour 

Make a picture!

Add more colour

And a bit more!

Brilliant!   Then we played Colour Bingo and then looked at print outs about Land Art and made our first Land Art Sculpture with the things we found...  

Land Art & Salt Making! Monday 18th July... £1 per family

This session will run at Seasalter on the beach and starts at 9.30am - please call Rebecca on 01227 264575 for exact location.

If you don't know what land art is here's a blog by international artists Richard Shilling and Julia Brooklyn that will tell you all about it or just come and join us!

Found treasures from our 'Colour Bingo'/ 'Intro to Land Art Session.

We will also be collecting sea water to make salt....  

Home Educators' Summer Festival, 23rd - 30th July, Suffolk.

http://www.hesfes.co.uk/

Stag Beetle habitat/climbing challenge

This week Finn really enjoyed the bamboo that the bug hotel was made out of. He experimented with using sections as musical instruments - Claves and drum sticks.

He found many different places to use his drum sticks including at the top of the new Stag Beetle habitat - an installation of tree trunks of differing heights supported in the earth.

He had to practise his climbing skills to get to the top of the tree trunks, and had to do good balancing to stand on one tree trunk while playing another.

Bug Hotel, Watering and Paper Butterflies.

Today I took the old bamboo lawn edging that has been cluttering up my garden to the Comm-Ed group to be part of the 'Bug Hotel' Rebecca and the others have built on the allotment and we pushed some of it into the slots for the insects to live in.

We have some left over that will become part of a musical instrument in time... Watch this space!!
We made these pretty butterflies.

We watered the plants.

And a play time! All in under 3 hours.

Collage

A few weeks ago my 2 year old daughter and I went to the community allotment for our 'unschooling' session, Rebecca had prepared this fantastic activity - double sided sticky tape living collage. My little Lu really enjoyed picking grass and flowers, we found all sorts of things as you can see and created this lovely picture to stick on her wall. We also participated in the beginnings of a bug hotel.