Cabin Fever

J and I went for a walk.  We found 2 horses and a crowd of chickens, who all rushed over to see us.  One of the horses was obviously a bit too excited to see us and started to break the fence down.  We didn’t hang around too long.

(Extract from diary of 1^st December 1984)

Sometimes you need to get out of the house, but it’s not always easy to think of somewhere to go.  Just walking around can be boring, but there are things you can see or do without paying an entrance fee.

One of the first trips I took J on when he was just a few months’ old was to see the chickens.  We lived on a housing estate, but just on the edge was a small farm, and on this small farm was a field of chickens.  When we got to the wire fence separating us and them, they would charge towards us with great speed and enthusiasm.  J seemed unperturbed by this and I’m sure it has stood him in good stead for the varied experiences he has subsequently had.  When faced with strange things, I’m sure his subconscious tells him ‘I survived the chickens!’

I was always on the lookout for things going on that we could go and see.  Here are a few good ones:

Workmen and building sites (someone’s always mending a hole in the road these days)

Watching street lights being mended (they have those amazing cherry pickers)

Go through a car wash

Watch a car being washed

Feed ducks

Bottle bank

Visit a pet shop

Wander round a local market

Visit the library (sometimes we went twice in one day)

Ride on a bus

Ride on a train

Stand on a bridge (if it’s over water, play Pooh sticks)

Visit the beach – collect stones with holes in, build a sandcastle, make a seaweed picture, make a sand sculpture, go beachcombing, look for other sorts of ‘treasures’, gather materials for craft activities

Go wool gathering (a traditional activity which I’ll talk about more later).

 

Dragon Heads

I sometimes helped out at the school’s end of year activity week.  This is quite a long time ago now, before rules and regulations about health and safety reached a peak.  One year the theme was puppets and I thought it would be really good to offer to help make sock puppets.  To be honest, I’d never made a sock puppet in my life, but I had it all worked out in my head.

Things didn’t start too well.  First of all I had one or two rather disruptive boys in the group, and then I was given the socks.  I tipped them out of a large bag and there they lay in a heap – steaming!  How could it be that parents could even think of sending in old socks that were dirty?  It didn’t go well.  By the end of the day we’d made very little progress in producing anything like one decent sock puppet and I still had four days to go.

The next day I asked if I could perhaps do something a little different with my group.  I’d brought in some empty cereal boxes and a lot of other junk (there was always plenty of spare at home) and told the children all to make a dragon head, each of a different colour.  This seemed to go down a lot better.  In fact, it went so well, I decided we might produce a play for the new dragon heads to take part in.

I made a Japanese lady mask and chose one of the girls to wear it.  We managed to get her kitted out in a kimono as well, so she really looked the part.  We created a sort of puppet theatre for the heads to make their appearance and I imported J, on a day off from school, to come in and paint the backdrop on one of our sheets (he was always very good at this sort of thing).  Finally I brought in some very ancient Japanese music that I’d used in a previous life, for dancing Japanese lady purposes.

The performance to the rest of the children was a great success and here is the story:

Once in Japan there was a forest filled with fearsome dragons and everyone was afraid of them.  One day a young lady came into the forest and began to dance.  The dragons were so mesmerized by this dancing that they joined in and eventually became peaceful. 

Short, but sweet and the children really enjoyed it.

As for the sheet, I never did quite get all the paint out.

Sticky Pictures

Making a sticky picture is an easy and most satisfying thing to do and is something I learnt about when I was a field study teacher.  Really you can make a sticky picture out of anything you like, but they work best when you are visiting a particular habitat such as woodland or the beach.

All you need is a small piece of card with some double-sided tape on one side of it.  When the time comes for you to make your picture, you simply remove the strip to expose the stickiness and attach your bits and pieces to the taped area.

I’ve just been to Dartmoor.  Dartmoor is a wilderness of bracken, gorse, heather, moss, lichens and other wonderful things.

This picture and the one below were taken on Dartmoor last week.

While I was there I took the opportunity to make some sticky pictures.  This is the first picture I made.  It’s mostly of lichens with a few bits of moss, dried leaves and small pieces of wood.

This is the second.  It’s mostly moss with a piece of lichen and a few cotton grasses.

The first time I ever visited Dartmoor was when I was a young student on my first teaching practice in Plympton.  My class teacher invited me to stay the weekend with her in Tavistock and took me onto the moor for the first time in my life.  I dug up a huge turf of Dartmoor and took it back to the classroom to show the children (things were different in those days!).  The children loved it – all the colours and textures.  Unfortunately this little sample of Dartmoor contained a secret – hidden deep inside it was a giant ants’ nest!

The Path Garden

Most people have never seen a path garden.  The main reason is because they don’t last very long – they’re here one moment and gone the next.  They are also quite rare.  In fact, I’ve only every made one in my whole life and that was about fifty years ago.

You first need a bit of spare path that isn’t going to be walked on for a while.  Then collect all sorts of interesting stones, sticks, leaves, flowers, grass, bark, seeds, moss, lichen, soil, etc.  Make a round or square border with the sticks or stones, then create a beautiful garden inside with all the other bits and pieces you’ve collected.

I remember the day I made the path garden and I’ve thought about it many times over the years.  I was all alone and I think it took me quite a long time.  I don’t remember what it looked like when it was finished.  All I do know is that I was really pleased with it and it was important to me.  After I’d gone indoors, my mum went out to look at it with the man over the road who was an ambulanceman and had very dark Brylcreemed hair.  I don’t know why I remember that.  Perhaps the fact that other people wanted to see it was also important to me.

If you would like to make a path garden too, but don’t have a bit of spare path, perhaps you could use an old tray or plate instead.   That way it would also last a bit longer.

The Squirrel Trap

There was a very bold squirrel in the garden today, which caused L to rush out into the wet garden with just her socks on.   J and P built a complex trap, where the squirrel was supposed eventually to land in a small bucket of water, and I presume when it had bedraggeldly climbed out, it would be shot by the new Bow and Arrow (sic).  I explained how cruel this was, so the plan changed to building a house instead.  A wooden box full of grass, a sheltered bit, a bucket of water to drink, a climbing pole, some nuts from the larder and the remains of J’s and L’s dinners.

(Extract from diary of 23^rd October 1989)

This is one of my favourite photos – the children posing with the ‘squirrel trap’ and L eventually equipped with wellington boots.  I remember this as being a good day – minimal arguing, working and playing together nicely, having ideas, using imagination, practising construction skills, developing kindness and compassion…

As for the squirrel, we saw neither hide nor hair of it again.

No, it wasn’t Squirrel Nutkin in our garden. We had a grey squirrel.

Pots of Gold

Grandson E is a star pot stirrer. He shakes them, he bangs them, he empties them and he even throws them. What he doesn’t do is put things into them. At only ten months old, this is understandable. He hasn’t as yet reached that level of skill – but it will soon come. While watching E with his pots last week, it occurred to me that a pot is one of the essentials of life, possessing a multitude of purposes. An empty pot can provide hours of occupation and entertainment for a baby or older child and what’s especially good is you don’t even have to buy them! When handing out pots to young children, they really need to be clean, unbreakable and safe. If they also have lids, then that’s a bonus.

Lovely Body Shop pots

There’s no need to buy special bath time toys. Just throw in the pots. If the young child can sit and play, they will watch the pot float, carry water, turn upside down. They can pour water from one to another and also see what happens when a pot has holes in. Psychologists have described these sorts of activities as being important for a child’s early development: http://www.simplypsychology.org/concrete-operational.html

The need to put things in and out of pots doesn’t wear off with maturity – older children love to keep collections and treasures in pots, adults store all sorts of things in old pots, I have pots full of pots…

Another thing babies like to do is to make a noise. A way to help them do this is to put rice, beans, beads or even stones into pots with a lid to make a variety of things they can shake. Seal the lid well and tape it if necessary. At a later date I might write about older children making percussion instruments, so if you have any pots leftover, save them for that.

Finally, a tribute to poor Eeyore, who for his birthday was given a pot of honey by Winnie the Pooh, who had eaten the honey himself, and a balloon from Piglet that had burst on the way.

“I’m very glad,” said Pooh happily, “that I thought of giving you a Useful Pot to put things in.”
“I’m very glad,” said Piglet happily, “that thought of giving you something to put in a Useful Pot.”
But Eeyore wasn’t listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting it back again, as happy as could be….